


The Race Has Long Gone By

by Birdbitch



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 1980s, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Retail, Conan the barbarian, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nerdiness, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2019-06-14 20:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15397230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: It's an autumn day in 1986 when Steve walks into a comic book store. Bucky happens to be the manager on duty.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There may be some anachronistic inconsistencies, but for the most part, the dates of things will be more or less where they should be. Steve Rogers finds himself unprepared to raise his nephew Teddy after a fatal car accident. Bucky has been working at the same comic book store for too long. Title comes from "I Melt With You."

It’s later in the morning, almost noon, when a guy who looks like Robert Redford walks into Bucky’s store, and Bucky’s sure that he must be mistaken about the time, or that he’s still in bed dreaming about  _ Barefoot in the Park _ because the resemblance is just that uncanny and there’s no way that someone like that has any business being in Bucky’s store. Well, not Bucky’s store, but essentially Bucky’s store. Even the regulars, the guys who are somehow able to come in and browse every morning while anyone else has to work, do a double-take when the guy glances around, trying to see what he wants without making it too obvious that he’s never been there and he has no idea what he’s doing. Out of place. Even if his posture didn’t say so, his clothes do.

Bucky takes pity on him (if it can be called that) and asks, “Can I help you find anything?” Did you wander in here by mistake? Did you maybe want the upscale clothing boutique two stores down to find a nice gift for the missus? Do you realize that this is a comic book store? 

The guy smiles sheepishly and reaches into his jacket pocket, taking out a scrap piece of paper and looking at it. “Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve come to a store like this,” he admits. Pleading. “About two decades, in fact. Can I get a hand?”

“Sure.” Bucky steps out from behind the counter, leaving the book he’s reading spread open, text down. “Are you buying for yourself or someone else?”

He sighs and rubs the back of his head. “My nephew. He’s been having a tough time and I wanted to do something nice for him, but when he told me some of the stuff he’s into, it kind of went way over my head.” The list he pulled out has a few titles on it that Bucky recognized, written in fat pencil lead in a font that Bucky knows belongs more to a teenage boy than it does to anyone else. He’s seen it on open game night sign up sheets plenty of times. A neat line has drawn through a few of them in light blue pen and a checkmark next to others. “He and his friends like this role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Advanced or regular?”

“There’s more than one?”

It feels sort of surreal because it’s been so long since a customer came in and didn’t know what  _ Dungeons and Dragons _ was, of all things. But the confusion on this guy’s face is genuine. Besides, Bucky’s been at the store since ‘81, when they first got the game in in the first place. “Haha, yes. There’s more than one. That’s alright. You’re in the right place.”

“It’s appropriate for a fifteen year old, right?”

“Yes. It’s appropriate for a fifteen year old.”

“Thank God. I’m just trying to find him anything to go along with it, and I don’t really know anything--I just get him and his friends pizza when they get together and play it on the weekends, you know?” 

“Sure,” Bucky says, and it must be the right thing, because the guy relaxes. There’s a real sweetness about it--the General never would have bought Bucky something like DnD, and even the sci-fi novels were pushing it. He can’t imagine his dad ever coming into a comic book store and asking for help anyway. So he imagines what he’d want--maybe figurines to put on the map, but the store doesn’t have that many in stock at any given moment. “We sell bags of dice that would probably work for any game,” he says. “We do also sell gift certificates, if you wanted to let him come pick his own thing out?”

“That could work. He also gave me this list of Conan comics--I really don’t like them, but if they’ll make him happy I figured I’d try seeing what you have. He’s missing a few of the older ones.” 

“We don’t have that many Conan comics. They’re the kind of thing that the guys who like them usually come in and buy them and leave. And to be fair,” Bucky says, “I don’t really like them that much, either.”

It seems to win him a few points. “Yeah? What do you like?” 

If he’s being honest, the same kind of stuff he liked as a kid. “Superhero stuff, I guess.”

The guy smiles at him, finally looking totally at ease. “Yeah, me too.” They catch eyes for a second--Bucky typically avoids eye contact out of habit--and it feels like a moment, indescribable except maybe by the romance authors that he sometimes steals from Toro, who claims he’s given them for free by the publishers, but the shop doorbell chimes and brings Toro in with it, along with some fall leaves from an unswept doorway, and the spell breaks as one of the regulars and Toro start chatting loudly about some video game that came out back in August. 

Bucky clears his throat and pushes a hand through the front of his hair, a bad nervous tell that Toro catches all the way from across the store. “Let me show you those comics,” he says, and then fills the air with a bunch of filler words about being able to maybe order some of the more recent serial titles they don’t have in store because they’re close to the distributor, or something. He knows that the doppelganger is nodding his head, but the words are probably going in one ear and out the other for him, too. Great. “Let me know if you can’t find anything,” he says.

“Sure. Thanks!” 

“My pleasure.”

When he turns around and sees Toro at the counter, Toro mouths it back at him and looks like he’s about to start laughing. “I got you an Italian with extra hots,” he says, winking. It’s usually like this when Toro comes in for a midshift when Bucky’s opening, or vice versa: One of them will grab lunch from the deli across the street, and they’ll eat out in the open because the store’s small enough and they’re not a corporate enterprise that they can eat wherever they damn well please, thank you very much. Toro’s unpacking when Bucky does make it back to the counter, and it looks like he actually managed to remember the soda this time. 

“Thanks.” Jerk. Bucky’s eyes fall back to the customer as he picks through the bags of dice to find one that looks right--or maybe feels right, or whatever--and, maybe not surprisingly, the most recent issue of  _ The Human Tank _ . 

Toro pretends to inspect the bag of Wise chips. “Jim and me finally beat Metroid last night, thank God,” he says. “Which, speaking of Jim, he’s not going to be able to run the chess club tonight. They needed him to take another shift at the station.” The bag of chips passes the inspection, and Toro moves onto the can of coke.

“I feel like Jim’s always working,” Bucky says. He kind of is--though he helps run the game nights as a favor to Toro more than out of a need for money. 

“We are too!” Toro says.

“Yeah, but we’re not putting out fires or saving cats from trees.” 

“Oh. Yeah, point.”

The Robert Redford doppelganger makes his way up to the counter with a fat stack of comics and the bag of dice. “I think I will get him one of those gift certificates you mentioned,” he says. “How much do people usually get on them?” 

“How many comics does he read a month?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up a little. “He might be one of those Conan guys you were talking about,” he says. “But if he needs any supplies or anything, I want him to be able to get it without worrying about it.”

“Twenty bucks? That’d also be able to get him a few of the paperbacks we’ve got.” 

“Sold.” 

Sold is an understatement--the guy spends about a hundred bucks on comics and dice and the gift certificate, which is more than most first-time customers ever do. He pays in cash. “Also, do you folks have any events, or anything like that? His friends are fine and all, and I’m glad he has them, but I think he could probably benefit from getting out of the house a little more.”

“Most teenage boys do,” Toro sings. “In fact, we do actually have a chess club here tonight, if you and yours are interested. Usually a pretty good turn out, definitely a good spot for a young man to meet new people.” 

“How many people?”

“Not too many,” Bucky says. “It’s lowkey.”

“Alright, that sounds like it could be promising.” He takes his change and tucks his wallet back into his pocket. “What time?”

“Six, tonight,” Toro says. 

“And you guys are?”

“Toro and Bucky. I’m Toro, he’s Bucky.”

“Great. I’m Steve.” He looks at Bucky when he says his name, and then looks at Toro. ‘I guess I’ll see you two tonight.” 

“See you there!” Toro says. There are knots forming in Bucky’s gut, and he can’t explain them. Doesn’t want to. Steve’s extremely attractive, even when leaving, and Bucky and Toro watch before turning to look at each other. 

“Don’t even,” Bucky tells him, and Toro gets a wide, awful grin on his face, like he knows exactly what Bucky is telling him not to do, and he cracks open his can of coke.

“It’s our job to invite people to these events, Bucky, or else Nick will tell us that we can’t have them any more because they’re not doing anything to increase our bottom line profit. And that--whoever, he’s clearly a very wealthy man--is our ticket to making sure these events keep running. And besides,” Toro says, taking a long sip from the can, “I’m not saying anything that you don’t already know.” He puts the can down and blinks a few long times at Bucky, still smiling. “Want to do a split shift and come back to run the chess club?”

“Weren’t you going to do it?”

“Well, someone’s gotta be home to make Jim dinner when he finishes his shift, and since you don’t give him backrubs like I do, and aren’t even living with us anymore, I guess that arduous task falls to me. You get to hang out with a tall blond who isn’t dead on his feet. Think about it, Buck. We both win. Even Nick Fury wins, and he hasn’t even come to the store in about two fiscal quarters.”

As much as it bothers Bucky that Toro’s opportunism has played out in Toro’s favor, again, like it always does, he can’t lie and say he isn’t maybe a little excited about the possibility of seeing the doppelganger--Steve, he reminds himself--again. “I hate split shifts,” he says. 

“You’ll do it though, right?”

He thinks, bites down into his sub and gets a mouth full of hots. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I will.”


	2. Chapter 2

Steve didn’t mean to spend over 100 bucks at that comic book store. Really, he didn’t. He also doesn’t feel all that guilty for doing so, though; the paper bag in the passenger seat feels more like an accomplishment than anything else, especially considering he would have probably bought anything the sales clerk had suggested and not only because he’s trying to cheer up his nephew. He’s got a type, and he oughta be embarrassed about how obvious he is, but he’s not.

It isn’t like the purchase was being made in bad faith. Teddy did give him a list of comics he was looking for, and Steve was able to look at them and know pretty quickly which ones were almost totally unlikely to be found--he works at the damn publisher, if he can’t get back copies it’ll be impossible--and the comic book store did have a lot of the ones that would be easier to get ahold of. He turns down the radio when he pulls into the neighborhood, because the neighbors don’t need any reason to look too closely at him and what he likes and doesn’t like, even if it’s “Tom Sawyer” on the station.

If he’s being honest, Steve doesn’t actually know how to deal with teenagers in general, let alone the one he’s found himself in charge of raising. Most of the readers of _The Human Tank_ are around Teddy’s age, but the most interaction Steve has with them are through fan (or hate) mail and convention appearances. There isn’t a lot of friction between them--at least, besides the usual parental-unit kind that Steve remembers having existed between him and his own mother--but he’s still new to this whole “parenting” thing.

Plus, Teddy misses his dad and, well, Steve misses his brother.

The accident was a few months ago at this point, Steve thinks. Long enough that the broken arm and leg Teddy had have healed, but not really long enough for anything else to have. And while Steve, too, is in some sense an orphan, it’s not like he knew his dad--died in the war, like so many other kids’ dads--and he was at least out of high school when his mom passed. He remembers that loss, but it’s not the same, and there’s a part of him that, while eager to relate and tell Teddy that his emotions are valid, realizes that it’s just something that he’s not going to be able to get. He doesn’t know what Teddy’s going through.

Billy Kaplan’s bike is on the back porch, leaning against Teddy’s because it doesn’t have a kick-stand. Well, at least he has some good friends. He unlocks the door and walks into the kitchen, picking up the stack of mail that Teddy must have brought in when he got home from school. Steve likes to take his time getting out of work mode anyway, before any immediate interaction with other people. Decompression. It’s been that way for years. He ducks his head out from the kitchen to holler up stairs, “Ted, I’m back from work!”

“I’m upstairs with Billy!” comes a response muffled through the floor and ceiling and probably bedroom door. Billy’s almost always over, Steve’s learned, unless Teddy is over at Billy’s.

Maybe he’s becoming his mother, now, he thinks, and frowns before shrugging his jacket off and throwing over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. He leaves the paper bag on the table, turns and gets a pot of coffee started, and starts flipping through the mail. Most of it’s junk, but there’s the electric bill and one from Discover that he’ll want to take care of ASAP. The only thing that’s really good is a postcard from his army buddy Dum-Dum Dugan, who’s vacationing in Hawaii. Lucky bastard, Steve thinks. He doesn’t think he’s ever actually taken any of his vacation days in the entire time he’s been working.

Steve’s on a second mug of coffee by the time Teddy and Billy finally make their way downstairs, fingers covered in tiny paint marks and Teddy sporting a bandaid on one finger. “Cut yourself on the models?” Steve asks, and Teddy looks confused before remembering the bandaid and nodding his head.

“Yeah, one didn’t really look right so I was trying to change it a little,” he says.

“Hi, Mr. Rogers,” Billy says, taking a seat at the table, where Teddy joins him after grabbing two cans of coke from the fridge.

“Hi Billy, how’s school?”

“It’s not so bad. Teachers haven’t really been giving out homework yet since it’s still early in the year.”

“Well, I know that if there's homework, you guys'll get it done. Teddy, I stopped at this comic book place today,” he says, indicating towards the bag. “There are a few titles that the guys at the office say aren’t going to be able to be found so I wasn’t able to get you everything, but I did get you some more dice and a gift certificate if you want to go back and take a look yourself. I hope they’re the right ones.”

Teddy takes a quick peak and nods his head, looking back at Steve. “Yeah, these are good. Thanks, Uncle Steve.” Billy takes the bag of dice from him and inspects it.

“This is pretty cool. Teddy’s always losing dice--”

“Not always--”  
“Then where’s the set I let you borrow? Anyway, he could really use them.”

It feels like a point of pride for Steve, and he tries not to smile too widely. “Well, if you need anymore, let me know,” he says. Good parenting points. Generally, it’s good to be liked by the kid’s friends, if he remembers how popular his mom was. Teddy pulls out the last comic, and Steve, embarrassed, reaches for it. “Hey, nope, that one’s mine.”

Teddy gives him a look. “Did you really buy your own comic?” he asks, holding out the copy of _The Human Tank_.

Steve takes it and looks at the cover. His signature is small--it’s not supposed to be that big, anyway, and besides it’s just really his initials--but it’s there. “I didn’t get a printed proof for this issue,” he says, which is a lie, but for whatever reason, he still feels like he has to defend himself. Which is stupid. He’s almost 40 and shouldn’t get so defensive when his 16 year old nephew calls him out on, yes, buying something he drew, but the truth is that even after having his job for 15 years, he’s still always surprised by himself, by the creation of something that other people read and buy, that he’s able to do what he likes for a living and that his illustrations are in high-enough demand that, along with royalties from a few kids books, he was able to buy his own place. He must still get a smile on his face when he flips through it and sees a few really well-colored panels, because Teddy groans at him. “It’s not a bad thing to be proud of something you’ve done, Teddy.”

If he rolls his eyes, Steve pretends not to notice. It’s good advice--but then, it’s advice Steve was given at the start of his career, and he’s found that it’s a lot easier to rely on what other people have told him and he’s found to be true. “Sure,” Teddy says, and Steve does notice when Billy kicks him under the table.

“I think it’s cool,” Billy says. Still. He remembers the first time Teddy brought Billy home, had tried sneaking upstairs with him before Steve caught them and asked to be introduced. Billy fanboyed, which Steve found strange and endearing at the same time; it was different than the way people would act at the conventions. Sincere. And besides, Billy wasn’t only there to meet Steve--that he and Teddy were virtually inseparable did a lot to help Steve’s anxiety about Teddy’s support network. That’s the phrasing they used at the family grief counseling sessions. Billy grins a little. “Think I could get an autograph?”

It’s a joke, but if he were serious, Steve probably wouldn’t mind that much. Not only is Billy evidence that Teddy is going to be fine, but he also happens to make sure all their homework gets done, and he’s a good kid besides. It’s good, Steve thinks, to have friends like that, and they’re harder to come by as you get older.

Steve has also realized, as he’s been shifting into the parenting role, that he really, really has started to age himself.

His coffee mug’s empty, but he holds onto it so he still looks like there’s a reason for him to hang out in the kitchen, besides the obvious, ‘Hey, how was your day, making sure you’re not as miserable as I felt today’ thing that he usually does. “By the way,” he starts, nodding his head towards the comics, “that store has a chess night, tonight. Might be a good way to get out of the house?”

“On a school night?” Teddy asks. Not willing; not such a good sign. That’s the other thing: TV has lead Steve to believe that teenagers are just as eager to go out and make trouble as they were when he was one, but Teddy? Is a homebody. He’d rather stay at home and read comics. That isn’t, Billy has told him, something new. Teddy never liked going out before, and he has even less reason to want to be in a car now.

“Well, it’s educational, right?” Steve says. “I don’t see anything wrong with going out and playing chess, as long as all your homework’s done. And Billy already said that you guys didn’t have that much in the first place.”

Billy looks at Teddy. “It could be fun,” he says. He gets it.

“I don’t even know how to play.”

“I can teach you.” If Steve had been the one to say it, then he knows Teddy would have shut him down instantly. But it’s Billy. There’s something about the way he says it to Teddy that gets Steve’s nephew’s attention, and it’s almost like a conversation happens without them even having to say anything. “If you want me to. I could.”

“You don’t have to go,” Steve says, finally.

Teddy looks between them, then settles his gaze on Billy. “How hard can it be?” he asks.

“It’s fun,” Billy says. “Is it alright if I call my mom to tell her?” he asks Steve, who nods his head.

“Sure. Phone’s right outside the pantry.”

“Thanks!”

Steve feels guilty thinking so--not even saying it!--but he might have other motives besides getting Teddy out of the house, even if he only plans on dropping Teddy and Billy off and then coming back to pick them up afterwards. He thinks back to the guy at the store and hides his face behind his (very obviously empty) coffee mug. Bucky. Important. Or maybe not important, but important to Steve. Some part of him feels like it’s even a little inappropriate, almost the same way as it feels listening to the radio too loudly as he’s getting home.

Or rather, it’s not inappropriate for him, but it could look inappropriate, Steve guesses, and that in this neighborhood could very well be the same thing. He himself doesn’t have a problem with the fact that he generally prefers men over women. He got over it awhile ago, and it’s not even like it stopped him from being drafted. In any case, he knows what he likes and who he likes and that was fine and well and good when it was just him and he didn’t plan on having a family because it wouldn’t have affected anyone else but him if he was ever outed. He shouldn’t have to be ashamed of it, anymore than he should be ashamed of being a popular illustrator for a best-selling comic, and the creator of another that was about to launch within the next year. But hell, he doesn’t even pursue anyone, hasn’t since college when it was assumed to be a sure thing. Even at bars (when he still goes), he waits until he’s the one being approached. If it were just him, it’d be fine. He can handle what people have to say about him.

It just feels like, if not for his sake, then for Teddy’s, it’s better to blend in. He hates it. Thinking about it get his mind shifted from the strange, youthful anxious anticipation of seeing someone you’re attracted to, the good kind of butterflies, to outrage that he has to be concerned about this kind of thing at all.

But he remembers: He can control himself. He has for long enough already (like it’s been that hard), can keep at it. Even if he still finds himself just as attracted to comic book nerds as he was back in high school.

Teddy pulls him out of his thoughts by asking what’s for dinner.

He hadn’t really thought about it. “We can pick up some fast food on the way, if that works for everyone?”

“Can we get McDonald’s?”

“Sure,” Steve says. He decides to stop worrying about his attraction to Bucky from the Comic Book Store for now, and decides to take the time he has before the game night to go up to his office and start sketching out a few panels for _Nomad_ _#1_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Human Tank" is (part of) the name of a superhero Steve drew to promote the sale of war bonds prior to becoming Captain America. His real name is Roger Stevens, and appears in Avenging Spider-Man #5. As expected, Steve finds it somewhat cringey (as we all do when people find things we wrote or made years ago, probably). Likewise, Nomad is also literally Steve. Write (or draw) what you know, I guess?
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as sailorbirdie.


	3. Chapter 3

About half an hour before the event starts, Bucky gets back to the store. Maybe it wasn’t even worth going back home for the two hours he had between the shifts ( _ thanks, Toro! _ ), especially since he didn’t change, or take a nap, or anything, but he did grab a pullover because it’s starting to get colder at night, and he did run a comb through his hair to try to conquer the permanent wave in it--which, of course, didn’t work. Never does. The store doesn’t look that different during the evening than it does during the day, besides a few extra customers moseying around and checking out comics they didn’t pick up on Wednesday, but there’s always a different feeling anyway. Or maybe Bucky’s just tired. He couldn’t even get the door open the first time, and he’s a key holder. 

Toro has the door of the storage closet wide open, and Bucky wants to complain at him about how it’s a theft risk, or something Nick Fury would probably say, but when he comes out carrying a box of chess sets, the desire passes. They’ve got plenty of their own sets, but most of the chess club just brings their own.

“I don’t really want to do this,” Bucky says, taking the box from Toro who wipes the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Of course you do,” Toro answered. “We want to spend every single minute stuck inside this comic store, while Nick runs his various other business ventures and stops in every once in a while to tell us how to rearrange fixtures.”

“I don’t even know how to run these things. I haven’t had to do an event in like, years.”

“Baby. That’s because I’ve been pulling Jim in to do them. All the regulars will know what to do, you just need to make sure they don’t, you know, walk off with the pieces or stick gum under the table tops.” A look of desperation or maybe despair crosses Toro’s face. “It’s not that hard. You can even probably close early.”

“I’m not really worried about the regulars, Toro, I’m more worried about the people who might be showing up to this thing for the first time.”

A huff, sigh, exhalation out of the nose. Toro’s looking out the windows instead of at Bucky, distracted. Yeah, Bucky thinks, that must be it. “Jim never has any problems, at all.” 

“Jim Hammond is also literally an android.”

That gets Toro to laugh, and Bucky doesn’t know why he’s putting the effort in to cheer him up since he’s leaving in at least twenty minutes at this point. “There’s no way a robot could do half the things he does,” Toro says. “It would fry their hardware. Anyway, events are way easy. You’re making it more than it needs to be, and I think, given that I have been your friend for a solid 15 years now--”

“Don’t say it like that, it makes me feel old--”

“--That you’re just nervous because you’re concerned that a certain celebrity doppelganger is going to show up.”

“I shouldn’t have told you anything.”

“Please. You didn’t need to tell me anything, it was just common courtesy that made you blurt it out.”

“When will I even be able to eat dinner?”

“There’s a Domino’s pizza for you on the counter. Still hot. Cheese and Crackers, Barnes, you are one of the most high-maintenance managers that this store has ever hired.”

“Not Geno’s? Corporate sellout.”

“Please. Geno’s is great if you have a family and you’re coming home from a baseball game, not if you’re twenty-seven years old and running a chess club meeting. Besides, you love Domino’s sausage pizza more, so who’s the real corporate sellout, huh?”

He couldn’t argue with that. Besides, the pizza was starting to smell really good from where he was standing. Yet. Yet. Yet. “They’re all going to mutiny against me,” he says. “And it will be your fault. And the store will collapse and Nick Fury will fire the two of us and then we’ll have to find someone else who will find two college dropouts.”

Toro’s mind has gone elsewhere already. He shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Super fucking cavalier of you, Raymond.”

“It’s as if you’re forgetting that you’re the one who started the game nights in the first place,” Toro answers. “Even if we cancelled it, they’d still show up. They’d still run themselves. But you, James Barnes, brought this upon yourself five years ago when you convinced Nick Fury to let us play Advanced D ‘n D at the store. This is a hell of your own making.”

It comes back to him when Toro says it, the first month he’d had his hands on the game and convinced Jim and Toro and their sort-of-friend Namor to come in and play a campaign. It must have been right after he’d been made a manager, because he knows they must have been in the store after close, and for a while. 

“Mother fucker.”

“Look, it’s not like I wouldn’t help you if I could.”

“You mean if you didn’t want to spend more time with Jim than here with our consumer base.”

“You caught me.”

Bucky can’t even be mad about it. He knows the circumstances around them, he knows that it’s hard when you both work irregular schedules. Or at least, he assumes it’d be hard, but hasn’t actually experienced a long enough relationship for it to have ever been an issue. But he figures, if he were dating someone, he’d probably rather be with them at home than at the shop any day. “When do you head out?”

“I’m going to leave in the next couple of minutes. If you really, really need me to stay and help, I can.”

“No--You’re right. I started this thing, I should be able to handle it. Can you just help set up some of the boards? I don’t know how to put together the 3D set.”

Toro doesn’t either, but at  that point the chess club has slowly started drifting in, and someone comes over to put it together themselves. While he’s leaving, Toro greets folks coming in, personable and friendly as usual. When Toro smiles, though, Bucky notices a crease by his eyes for the first time, and wonders too if he’s got an identical one, if it’s actually been there all along, or if the past five years have caught up to them, finally. The General has stopped asking Bucky if he’s ever going to bring a nice girl home, and Bucky assumes that it’s because he figures that he won’t meet anyone working at the comic book store, and not because he’s. Well. “Funny” is how the General put it, seeing Jim and Toro, but he didn’t really mean it as ha-ha funny, and the General is a lot of things, but progressive isn’t really one of them. Up until that point, Bucky remembers, he used to call the two of them--Bucky and Toro, that is--partners in crime, but afterward it never really came up. Part of him thinks the General’s got to be an idiot not to realize that he’s “funny” too, but he knows that’s not it, that it’s easier to assume your son hasn’t tried getting married yet is because he hasn’t met the right girl, not because he prefers men.

It’s a weird digressive thought, and Bucky works his way through the chess players to the counter to grab a slice of his pizza. Of course he’s jealous that Toro has Jim and Jim has Toro, so that’s what he assumes spurred it, though it’s not like he wants them to be unhappy. He just wants to have something like that too. Which is why he starts getting the nut of disappointment growing in his gut when it starts looking like Steve From-Earlier isn’t going to show up. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere anyway (never does), and not, Bucky thinks, that he has any right to get disappointed, or that Steve was even obligated to show up just because he bought some comics and said he would bring his nephew. 

He likes the sound of the chess players as a distraction, but is otherwise bored, ready to go back to the romance novel he’s gotten way too invested in to play it off as having nothing else to read and just let them run themselves (like they weren’t already) when he notices Steve and two teenagers coming up to the door. That’s not his nephew, it’s his son, Bucky thinks, because the resemblance is uncanny at best, right down to their clothing choices. (Though maybe that’s not a choice on the nephew’s part, clothes picked at the same store because of the convenience of shopping at the same place.) The bell above the door jingles and Steve waves at him when he sees him, like they’re old friends. Like they haven’t just met. 

When Steve goes in for a handshake, Toro’s voice pops into his head to tell him that there’s no wedding band on either of his ring fingers. 

“Glad you could make it,” Bucky says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Steve’s hand is warm and large and smooth, something Bucky can feel even as he pulls away to indicate towards the teenagers standing awkwardly behind him.

“This is Teddy, my nephew, and his friend Billy,” he says. “We kind of bullied Teddy into coming.”

“No,” Teddy says, but something about the flush on his face when Billy grins at him tells Bucky that yes, they probably did have to do heavy convincing to get him there--and Bucky can relate. Billy and Teddy seem more interested in the comics than the chess club, already wandering off together towards the stacks, while Steve stands in front of Bucky.

“I can’t really stay too long,” he explains, somewhat apologetic. “You know teenagers--I don’t want him to think I’m being overprotective. My office is nearby, so I’m going in to get some work done.”

He doesn’t have to explain himself, Bucky wants to say. It isn’t like he’d choose to be there if he didn’t have to be. Chess is chess and there are people who like it but most people aren’t that into it. “Ah,” he says instead, “work.”

“Yeah, I’m behind on deadlines and I just need to make sure it doesn’t come back to bite me in the butt. But uh, I’ll be back. Later. To pick them up, I mean, around eight? How long do these usually last? Maybe we could play a game when I come back?”

“Well, we’re open until nine, so I’m sure we could squeeze a match in,” Bucky answers, smiling. 

“Good. Great.” Steve smiles and Bucky knows he’s in trouble, for real, because Steve still looks like Robert Redford and because he came back and it’s been long enough since Bucky has gotten any kind of attention from anyone that he’s willing to take all of this as far as it will go. “I just have to let them know that I’m leaving and when I’ll be back but. I will be. To play chess.” 

“Right. To play chess.”

Steve ducks out to find Billy and Teddy, and Bucky watches as he claps a hand on Teddy’s shoulder, hears him telling him that if he needs him, just to call the office, He’ll be back at this time, You have the ten bucks I gave you for food right, and other reassurances that he’s around, if Teddy needs to leave early. Teddy nods his head a lot in response, and then while Steve leaves, is pulled by the hand by Billy to a table. 

If they need help, Bucky figures, they’ll ask for it, which is his general approach to customer service in general. He heads back to the desk to finish eating his pizza before it gets too cold and to read the next chapter of the bodice ripper, and to try not to get his hopes too high for nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sailorbirdie on Tumblr, and I have a ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/A8005O7


	4. Chapter 4

“I actually haven't played chess in years,” Bucky says, setting up the board. Steve grins at him, unable to help himself. “Uh. Usually it's our friend Jim who does them. These. Game nights.”

“That's okay,” Steve says. “I’ll let you go first.” The teenagers have moved past chess, are checking out comics together, and the only reason Bucky notices is because he knows that they’re the only ones in the store now besides Steve. 

“Let me go first?” Bucky asks, and Steve shrugs a little, resting his chin in his hand. The table they’re at is a little too low, chairs a little too high. Like sitting at the kids’ table during Thanksgiving, Bucky thinks, and he’s hunched over but is sure he doesn’t look half as good as Steve does doing it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m a little more practiced than you, is all,” Steve says, and then he looks around, notices how empty the rest of the store is. “I’m not keeping you from going home, am I?”  
Yes, but it’s worth it. Yes, but even though I don’t like chess, I do think I like you. Yes, but I’d keep the store open until midnight if it meant getting to know more about you. “No,” Bucky says instead. “I don’t have anything really waiting at home, anyway.” He moves a pawn and frowns. “That’s right, right?”

Steve looks at him and then the pawn and shakes his head. “Ah, no diagonals,” he says. “For pawns, unless you’re capturing.” 

“Right.”

“We don’t have to play chess,” Steve says. “I thought--I’m not very good at it either.” 

“Then why?”

Steve turns his head to look at the boys, who are fully engrossed in whichever comic they’ve got out, have a quiet argument going between themselves. “I thought it might be. Nice? Just getting out of the house. Getting him out of the house, especially, but. Getting out of the house myself.” He looks over the board and moves a pawn two spaces forward. “I know we don’t really know each other, but you seem nice enough, and I don’t have very many close friends outside of work.”

“I find that kind of hard to imagine,” Bucky says, “but I work with my best friend, so maybe I’m the wrong person to ask about it.” 

“Gotcha.”

“But, uh, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“You can come in here anytime, you know? We’re open. Or if you wanted to hang out outside of this place, you know. I have a phone number. Even splurged for an answering machine recently.” Bucky smiles at him and moves another pawn. It feels like the wrong move to make, but they’re just going through the motions of playing now. “So even if I missed the call, I could always call you back.” 

Steve thinks about it, and then says, “I’ll need your phone number first, if I’m going to call you,” in a quiet voice. 

“Right,” Bucky says, feeling his cheeks heat up. He thinks the last time he gave anyone his number must have been back in the first few weeks of college, and he gets up suddenly, knocking the table with his knees and sending the chess board askew. “Oh, shit.”

“Are you alright?” Steve asks, and he nods his head.

“Just super clumsy, sorry--not that we were actively playing but I still feel like--uh. Right. Give me a second?” 

“Sure, I’ll clean up?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Embarrassing, embarrassing. His face is bright red when he gets to the register, pulls out receipt paper and writes his number on it in dying ballpoint pen, is just as red when he comes back to give it to Steve. “We don’t have to finish the game,” he says, handing the paper to Steve. “And uh, for the record. You seem like you’re a pretty nice guy too, and I don’t have very many close friends outside of work, either. And as you can see, it’s not like there’s all that many people here at any given moment.” He feels like he’s rambling, and Steve smiles at him and stands up straight anyway. Catalogue model. Maybe that’s what he does. Maybe that’s why he’s familiar looking, not just because he looks like Robert Redford. Or maybe he just gives off that kind of vibe. Doesn’t really matter why, in the end. “And uh. I could probably use your number too.” 

“Oh! Oh, right. Here--” He has a pen in his jacket pocket and a little fat book, and he writes his number down on it. “I’m. I’ll call you?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“Good. Great.” He checks his watch and frowns. “I can’t believe it’s already nine. Boys, we should get going. It’s still a school night.” Really, the only person who seems like he isn’t ready to leave is Steve. And maybe Bucky’s reading it wrong, but maybe he’s not, and maybe Steve’s interested. This is the first time anyone’s given Bucky their number, too. Teddy and Billy wave their goodbyes, and Bucky waves back, is about to lock up the door behind Steve as he leaves and follows them to the car when Steve looks like he’s just remembered something and comes hustling back. Bucky holds the door open a crack and Steve stands there, backlit by the sodium lights and hair blowing just enough with the fall breeze. “Did you forget something?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. And he looks--cool. There’s no other way to put it; the way he stands in front of Bucky and rests his forearm on the doorway is very much a cool-guy pose, and Bucky loves it, a little (a lot). “How about drinks tomorrow, if you’re not working.”

“I’m not working,” he answers, too quickly. Toro owes him if he is working anyway. They always owe each other something, and this is definitely  _ something _ . 

“There’s a bar over on West and 5th, the Purple Elephant. It’s right near the offices where I work, if you want to meet there.”

“What time?”

“Six?”

“Okay.” Bucky can feel his own smile reaching up to the corners of his eyes, and the relief in Steve’s radiates off him. “I’ll see you at six.”

“Okay. It’s a date.” And there’s a moment, where it almost feels like if they were somewhere different, or someone different, this is where he’d bend down a little more and kiss him, but he doesn’t do that. The electricity is still there, when he pulls away from the doorway and straightens himself out. Steve’s still smiling, then, but soon hurrying back to the car, and Bucky can see him telling Billy and Teddy something in the silhouette of the cabin lights--maybe about seatbelts, or that he’ll be dropping Billy off on the way, or something like that which Bucky can only imagine--before they’re taking off. 

A date. His entire body vibrates through counting the till, through making sure all the money is in the safe, making sure the store gun is locked up too in the event of a robbery. Locking the door--his hands are vibrating. He floats down the street, doesn’t feel like he needs to zip up his windbreaker because he’s filled with warmth. He’s probably not reading Steve wrong, and even if he is, he has plans besides watching Tales from the Darkside with Toro and Jim while the two of them canoodle behind him on the couch and he gets stoned to try to ignore it. (Though, realistically, he’ll still probably get stoned when he comes home from hanging out with Steve.) 

Or maybe Steve would want to get stoned and watch Tales from the Darkside together, even though he’s definitely more of an adult-adult than Bucky is. He still bought the superhero comics. On the other hand, he takes care of at least one teenager, and Bucky has no idea how long he’s been taking care of him. Maybe Steve is a model parental figure. Maybe he doesn’t do anything bad, ever. 

He won’t know until they spend more time together. 

The walk home takes less time than he thinks it usually does, or time just has become irrelevant until tomorrow. He fumbles with his keys in the low light of the stoop, then climbs up past Jim and Toro’s apartment--really, Jim’s, because Toro is still on his lease agreement even though he moved all his stuff down to Jim’s apartment ages ago--and into the dark. He’s barely been able to sit down for a minute when Toro comes in, cheeks flushed. “I was waiting for you,” he says, and Bucky frowns at him, half illuminated by the glow of the kitchen light.

“What?”

“I was listening. I want to know how it went.”

“How what went?”

“He showed up, didn’t he?” Toro’s in a state of half-undress, settling into Bucky’s couch. “The guy. The blonde one? From this morning?”

“Yes.”

“I knew he would!” 

Jim Hammond is coming into the apartment now, knocking first but not waiting for a response, as he too lacks a shirt and a belt and shoes. “Hello, Bucky,” he says. “How was the chess night? Toro said you met someone?”He sits down next to Toro and wraps an arm around his shoulders, and Bucky looks between them. This happens with frequency--the two of them, together, stopping whatever they’re in the middle of to see what’s going on when he gets home. 

He doesn’t know what he’d do without them. 

“Uh. It was okay, I guess. I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

“You were probably fine,” Toro says. “So he showed up. What happened?”

The same floatiness that Bucky felt earlier comes back to him. “We’re getting drinks tomorrow,” he says. “He, uh, gave me his number, and he asked me if I wanted to get drinks, and I said I did, because I do. With him.” And for proof, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out Steve’s number, and puts it on the coffee table for Jim and Toro to inspect. 

“I know that signature,” Toro says, after looking for too long at it. Bucky frowns.

“What do you mean, you know that signature?”

“Look at it,” Toro says. He points at the curve of the ‘S’, traces the line of the ‘t’ through to where it crosses the initialled ‘R’. “Jim, you know what I’m talking about, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky says, and he snatches the phone number back off the table. “Are you implying that he gives his number out a lot?”

“You’re a fucking idiot. Wait a minute.” Toro gets out of Jim’s grasp and leaves the apartment for a few minutes before coming back with a comic book. “Okay, so maybe I’m blowing it out my ass but. What did you say Steve does for work?”

He didn’t. Because he didn’t know. “He has an office near the place we’re going for drinks.”

“Real specific, Barnes. Maybe if you’re going out with someone find out something about them. What’s his last name.”

“I...also don’t know that.”

“Hi, officer? Yeah, my friend went to meet some guy for drinks after work, nothing weird about it I swear, but he hasn’t come back? Can I describe the person he was meeting? Sure, he said his name was Steve, and he looked like Sundance?” Toro rolls his eyes. “What was the comic he bought?” 

“He bought a couple. I can’t remember.”

“I can.”

“You have an eidetic memory, so that’s not fair.”

“I glanced over and happen to remember the two of you bonding over superheroes. Take a look at this.”

Toro hands him the comic book, mylar bag smooth when he takes it. “ _ The Human Tank _ ?”

“The signature.”

It’s small--almost unnoticeable--but the ‘S’ is familiar. “Why are you like this.”

Jim laughs. “He does it all the time,” he says, “but he might have a point. Also, you’re going out by yourself? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Why don’t we join you guys?” Jim suggests. 

“That is a great idea,” Toro says. He takes the comic back. “For one thing, Bucky doesn’t even know that our humble store has been visited--twice!--by one of the most popular comic artists in this decade, and also, even if it isn’t him, Bucky could be in very huge danger.”

And Bucky hates it, because Toro probably has a point, and also, because there’s the possibility that Toro might be right about everything. “He would have told me if he drew the damn comic,” he mumbles, and Jim shrugs.

“I don’t tell everyone I’m a firefighter,” he says.

“How often do you run into people who haven’t seen you on the news?” Toro asks. 

“Oh, that’s true. But you didn’t know I was a firefighter,” Jim says. “In any case, there’s safety in numbers. We’ll meet you at the bar after Toro closes.”

“If I want you guys to beat it, though--”

“Like an egg,” Toro smiles. He turns on Bucky’s TV before sitting back down, moving himself into Jim’s space until they’re the same organism. And Bucky is only a little jealous of how easily they meld together.

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

“Steve Rogers, you're beaming.” 

“Maybe I am,” is how he answers Natasha. She's come to collect him and Sam for lunch; they've been doing this since they started at the company. 

Sam already has his coat on. “Steve's got a date,” he says. “And not a fake one, either.”

“It's not a date,” Steve says.

“But you want it to be,” Sam says.

He wants it to be. Sam's right; Sam Wilson is usually right. “We can talk about it at lunch,” Steve says. 

“And leave me in suspense? When Sam already knows?”

“You'll live.” Steve's spread, on the other hand, might not. He'll deal with it later, he decides, and gets up to grab his coat, too. “I don't really think my love life needs to be talked about at work.” 

“Or lack of one,” Sam says. 

Steve grits his teeth, but doesn't say anything. He listens to Natasha and Sam go back and forth, and is definitely the subject of their conversation, but what can he say? I met someone, who is probably not gay and is almost definitely ten years younger than me. That would get him deeper into even more friendly humiliation territory. 

“What does he do?” Natasha asks as soon as they're out of the building. 

“He works at a store,” Steve says. 

“A comic book store.” Sam provides more information.

“Does he know who you are?”

“No—no, I don't think so.” He bites his bottom lip. “I didn't tell him, and it's not like there are pictures of me in the comics.”

“You've done interviews,” she says. “I'd exercise caution.”

“It's not a date.”

“Then you won't mind if Sam and I come with.” They pick Chinese food, take their usual table at the back. “If it's not a date.”

She's doing it, Steve knows, to look out for him. There are a million things that can go wrong, especially for Steve and especially in his position. It even makes sense to him—having his own witnesses, so to speak. “Of course not,” he says. He does mind, though, because he's an adult, and he can scope out bad situations. 

“Good,” Natasha says. 

“Steve’s a big boy,” Sam says. “We don’t have to go.”

“No, it’s fine. The more the merrier,” Steve says. He’s waiting for a drink and for noodles, even though usually when they do lunch, he doesn’t drink anything. (Really, Steve hasn’t drank much at all since becoming Teddy’s guardian.) 

Sam doesn’t buy it, but also doesn’t call him out on it. Natasha doesn’t buy it either, but she’d insist either way. “How’re the drafts for Nomad going?” she asks instead, and Sam and Steve look at each other, because the drafts have been killing both of them. Sam writes, Steve draws it, they both realize it looks stupid and have to start from scratch. They’re not even sure they’ll make the deadline, and they were supposed to have the first six issues done last week. They’re on number one. 

After considering this, and sharing a look with Steve over his glass, Sam swallows. “We’ll make it in time,” he says. “We always do.”

“What’s the hold up this time?”

“I’m on six projects and Sam’s on five,” Steve says.

“We also don’t know where it’s going.” 

“If it’s going anywhere.”

“Maybe it could just be a metacomic. Postmodernism is still in, right?” Sam asks, and Steve snorts.

Natasha’s not outwardly amused, but there’s a little smile at the corner of her mouth, like it’s threatening to come out of hiding. “This is serious,” she says. “We need to get them to print soon.”

“Like I said, we’ll make it in time,” Sam repeats. Though maybe they will need to pull extra hours, and maybe they will wind up doing weekends, again. Steve’s also got a contract for a children’s illustration gig, but they haven’t sent him the manuscript yet, so maybe he’ll be able to triage and account for that absence when he gets into it. One of the other projects is wrapping soon, and his run on  _ The Human Tank _ is coming to an end. There are other titles that he’ll be stepping into, and a few one-shots, so it’s not like he has to worry about being out of work, but it will slow down enough that he’ll be able to concentrate on a few other things instead of just superheroes all the time. 

Maybe he’ll even do some pattern illustration contracting, for the hell of it.

He lets out too audible a sigh, and Natasha and Sam both give him a look, like they’re about to neg him about it. “Maybe we have too many titles coming out,” he says. “Some guys only read one or two.”

“We need a variety of titles,” Natasha says. “People have different tastes.” 

“I know.” 

“Tell us about your date,” Sam says, shifting gears. 

“Not a date,” he answers, but ah—the butterflies are there again. “I feel like I’m in high school right now.”

“And how long ago was that for you?”

“Har har. Long enough to know not to get too excited. Uh. I don’t know that much, to be honest. We played chess together.”

“Probably pretty cute, huh?” 

“Looks aren’t everything,” Steve says, but he stares down at his placemat.

“So ubercute. Works at a comic book store. I’m expecting glasses,” Natasha says. 

“No glasses.” At least, as far as Steve knows. “It’s not a date, but I very much want at least a friendship to come out of this. Can we set some ground rules for what we can and cannot talk about?”

“Of course,” Sam says. “As long as we can still rib you every now and then, when you start playing the ‘old man’ thing too hard.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else. I just—I don’t want to talk about, for example, the army. If he brings it up I’ll answer a question but I don’t want to talk about it and don’t need to right now. And—no work. Nomad is still technically not announced and won’t be until we get the first three issues down to print proofing.”

“Is that all you want us to avoid talking about?” Natasha asks. 

Steve sits for a moment, frowns. Considers the way she’s asking the question. “No,” he says. 

“It probably won’t come up,” Sam says. “If we’re all thinking about the same thing.”

He looks at them, waits for the waiter to finish setting down their plates with warnings that it’s hot, and leave. “What if there’s a part of me that wants it to come up?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admits. “I can generally take care of myself. I’m able to. You know—nobody’s going to be able to get the drop on me, if anything ever came to that. I’ve been shot before, and I’m not impervious to bullets, but I’ve kept myself sharp. I’m not worried about that anymore. It’s the other things. Like what if I read a situation wrong? But on the other hand. How long have you two been together, now?”

Sam and Natasha look at each other. “It’s been about four years,” Sam says, “but that feels like a rhetorical question.”

“It is, I guess. And I’m not—is it alright, to admit that sometimes, it gets lonely?” 

Because God, it does—he’s been lonely for most of his life, he’s sure of it, sometimes. Their lunch goes by quicker, after that, after the admittance that whatever his life is, however successful he’s been, however happy he can be, that sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes, it would be nice to spend the rest of his life with someone else. He and Sam get back to work, spitballing ideas about what the actual story arc for  _ Nomad _ should look like, when he sets down his pen and looks at Sam. “I'm not a recognizable guy, am I?” he asks, and Sam looks at him like he's grown five heads. “I mean. Do people know what we look like?”

“We get...misidentified, I think,” Sam says. “Is this about what Nat said?”

“Little bit.”

“A little?”

“A lot.”

Sam groans. “C'mon. Nat says things sometimes without thinking about the person who she's saying them to. We both know this.”

“I guess.”

“Are you worried that he knows, or that he doesn't?”

“I just want it to be like, organic.”

“It's as organic as you can get.” Sam rolls his eyes and laughs at Steve a little bit. “Take it one step at a time. You're the one who keeps saying it's not a date.”

They get back to work, Steve sketching out a storyboard while Sam works on dialogue, works on what's actually going on in those panels. They hand things back and forth, put sticky notes over changes in canary yellow, and both wind up with graphite on the sides of their hands. The silence is companionable; they've been writing and penciling together for the past five years. They know how to work together. This is how they get two more issues ready to be actually drawn up, and since it's their baby, Steve's already decided he's doing color and inking too. 

“He  _ is _ cute,” Steve says after a while, and Sam's head perks up. “Cute enough to make me feel stupid.”

“I know that kind of cute. It's usually bad news.”

“What about when it's not?”

Sam gets a grin on his face. “You know exactly when it's not bad news, what it is.”

“Yeah,” Steve answers. He lets out a long sigh, sets aside his tools, and stretches up, yawning. “I hope Teddy remembers that there's leftovers in the fridge for dinner.”

“How's he doing?”

“You know. As well as he can be. He has some really good friends.” 

“And you?”

He shrugs. “It's been a lot. I never thought I'd have a kid, and now here I am taking care of a teenager. But here I am.” He looks at Sam. “You and Nat ever talk about it?”

Sam puts his hands up. “Not ready yet. We've got time.” He glances over at the clock on the wall. “Speaking of which. About time to call it a day—did you want to head home to freshen up before your date?”

“Not a date if you and Nat are going to be there,” Steve says. 

“We don’t have to come.”

“You do, or else I’ll never hear the end of it, because it’ll get around to everyone.” Steve looks at himself, then back at Sam. “I don’t look that bad, do I?”

“Where’re we going?”

“The Purple Elephant.” 

Sam gives him a look over and shrugs. “Lose the tie and you’re probably fine. It’s a weeknight.” He gets up, looks over the work they’ve done, and looks at Steve. “You don’t have to keep working until it’s time to go out, you know.”

He shrugs. “Maybe, but I’ve got a lot to do. And not just on this project. Someone pitched a kid’s book out to me and I took it because—I don’t know. Even taking care of Ted, it’s not like I’ve got a whole lot going on.”

“Suit yourself. I’m going home and consolidating rides with Nat.”

“She finally get the Corvette?”

“It’s so nice, Steve.”

“Ha, I’ll bet.” 

Sam squeezes his shoulder. “I’m taking off. Don’t stay too late.”

“Just late enough.”

“See you at the bar.” 

Steve waves Sam out before looking back at the drafts. Sam is almost definitely right—he can afford to leave some of the work for tomorrow. As tight as their deadline feels, they’re both at the point where they’re successful enough in their own rights that if they wanted, they could push against the deadline. (It’s fortunate that this is the press they’re at, that it’s not another imprint or publisher.) He turns away from  _ Nomad _ and looks instead at the pages he’d started coloring earlier, looks at the spread of ink across the pages, at the bristle of stubble on the superhero’s (anti-hero’s? He’s not sure) face, wonders if it should be darker, or if he’s totally screwed over the entire page. From a distance, it looks fine. Up close, he sees a million things that he could change, should—until he decides that it’s not going to get any better, and remembers how obnoxious it is to rework a page after it’s been overworked. 

And eventually, it is time for him to head out, to go to the bar, and he still sees a couple of guys still working at their desks, and waves bye to them on his way out the door. He doesn’t recognize the song on the car radio, but it puts him in a good mood the entire drive over, and when he gets to the parking lot, he sees Sam and Natasha leaning against her bright red Corvette, smoking and laughing. There was one other sinking feeling that he was avoiding the entire day, and it was that Bucky might not show up at all—in which case Steve would never be able to go to that comic book store ever again, among other things—but he realizes now that Natasha volunteering herself and Sam to come with provides a nice buffer against him looking like a total idiot in that eventuality.  _ It’s called risk management _ , he can hear her voice in his head, and it gets him smiling when he gets out of the car to meet them. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really touched by the feedback this has gotten so far! Thanks everyone who's commented.

Bucky has never been to the Purple Elephant before, but Jim has, and that’s why Jim’s the one driving the three of them to the bar. It looks like any other place when they pull up--it's tall enough of a building to be two floors, like a lot of the other bars in town, and old enough that this isn't its first name. He’s got jitters in his stomach, staring at the floor of the backseat, when Toro turns around and nudges his knee. “We're getting out of the car,” he says, which means him, too, since Toro has to pull the seat up to let him out. His foot gets caught and there's a moment where he's sure that he's about to fall, gut lurching while he looks at the pavement, but he balances, pulls his foot out. Ignores the laugh on Toro's face. Stares at the building and wants to turn around. He really,  _ really  _ wants to see Steve, but he's been worried all day that it's just going to end up being him, Toro, and Jim. 

“Thanks for driving,” Bucky says, and he puts his hands in his pockets for something to do while looking around, scanning for Steve. Do they meet inside? Out here, in the parking lot? Is he early? A few other couples are walking up to the doors, giving Bucky the sense that this is kind of a yuppie place. Not somewhere people like him congregate. (You only congregate at movie releases and conventions, Barnes.) He even feels a little underdressed, or would if Jim and Toro weren't dressed almost the same as him. But it's getting chillier, and he doesn't see Steve yet. “Um.”

“We can wait by the door. Some of these places have heaters above the entrance,” Toro says, and Bucky nods. “You look nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.” He is. He follows Toro and Jim across to the entrance, keeps an eye out, and then sees him, walking over to a couple leaning against a red Corvette. The woman offers him her cigarette and he waves it off, and Bucky can see him laughing, saying no, and there are butterflies in his gut and he says, “He brought people, too.” 

And then Steve's head turns and he catches Bucky's eye and waves, tells something to his friends, and starts to hustle over. “Is that him?” Jim asks, and Bucky nods. “He's handsome!”

“Of course he is,” Toro says, and he and Jim have a short back and forth that Bucky doesn't care about, because Jim is right, Steve  _ is  _ handsome, and it's going to suck majorly if he's straight and Bucky's been reading everything all wrong. But Steve hangs out with attractive people; even the couple he's with have movie star looks. “Hiya, Steve,” Toro says.

“Hi, Toro. Bucky,” Steve says, and there's a thing that passes between them—sorry, they wanted to come—and he indicates towards his friends. “I, ah—this is Sam and Natasha. We work together. They're married.”

“This is Jim,” Bucky says, and Toro's already been introduced, but. There it is again—the same feeling about difference like his dad talking about Toro. Wanting to be able to say what Jim and Toro are to each other the same way Steve could introduce Sam and Natasha, feeling it on the tip of his tongue but having it pulled back into his throat instead. “He's a firefighter,” Bucky finishes, lamely. 

“Should we go in and get a booth? It's getting kind of cold out,” Natasha suggests more than asks, and Jim and Toro lead the way in, Toro starting conversation quickly (“How long have you guys all known each other? Whose car is that? How about the Mets?”). 

He should listen, but he can't—Bucky and Steve linger a little behind the rest of the group. “Toro invited himself and Jim along,” he says. 

“Nat did the same thing,” Steve says. “Sorry—once she's made a decision about something, there's no convincing her otherwise.” Bucky notices gray on the side of Steve's hand when he's taking his coat off, thinks about what Toro said, and pushes it out of his head. Newsprint, he thinks. “Plus, we don't really all go out anymore, so.”

“Oh?” Bucky asks. They have to wait for a table, are stuck in the cherry wood of the restaurant foyer while Sam asks for menus while they're waiting and Natasha points out the drink menu to Toro. Jim’s explaining what he has and hasn't liked when he's been here. Their conversation isn't going to be interrupted, even when the hostess comes back and indicates that she's ready to bring them to their seats.

Steve shrugs a little. “Yeah. Since they've gotten married it'd be even more like third wheeling all the time, and I've been taking care of Teddy, so it's been awhile. I'm glad you said yes to coming out.” And if Steve looks a little embarrassed when he says this, Bucky's not going to call him out on it. “It's weird because I hadn't really thought about how housebound I've been.”

Sam hears this while he's sliding into the booth and makes a face.. “You have  _ not _ been housebound, Steve Rogers. We were literally in San Diego in August.”

Steve frowns, settles in next to Natasha, leaving Bucky to sit across from him and next to Toro. “That doesn't count. It was for work. I barely left the hotel room,” he says, and his cheeks are pink. 

“What kind of work do you do?” Jim asks, and coming from him, it sounds innocuous, like he  _ hadn't  _ been a part of the conversation happening the night before. Genuine interest is Jim Hammond's trademark. 

“We're in an office building all day,” Natasha answers. “Sometimes Sam and Steve have to go to conferences. Bucky, Steve said you and Toro work at a bookstore?”

“A comic book store, mostly, but we sell mass market paperbacks and tabletop games, too,” Bucky says. This place, he's decided, feels like the inside of a lobster trap, if the lobsters had the ability to put up plaques engraved with things said by people who were drunk. It's also like a trap in that he feels like he's trapped if he says anything to Natasha, like no matter how he answers it'll sound stupid. A bookstore? Yeah, right. 

“We don't have to talk about work,” Sam says. “We were just there for eight hours.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, even though he hadn't said anything. “I was starting to think that maybe I hadn't left the office. Are you guys all from around here?”

“I am,” Jim says at the same time Toro and Bucky say “We're not.”

“Call us translocal,” Toro says. “Bucky and I were both army brats.”

“Both?” Steve asks, and he's giving Bucky a little smile that makes Bucky want to melt a little. A lot. Right into the hard wood of the booth. 

He rolls his eyes. “There's not always a lot to do on bases,” he says, and he thinks back to it—there was plenty for him and Toro specifically to do, trouble to get into, but they're not places made for families. “It wasn't like it was a very stable childhood or anything.”

“I wouldn't think so,” Steve says. 

“We had fun, though,” Toro says. 

Bucky's memories prior to the General's retiring are spotty in some places as a result of forced forgetting. Some of what he has are good; he and Toro  _ did _ have fun. They never had to pay for pinball because they used all the GIs’ free plays, for instance, and they were able to sneak alcohol plenty, and they got into trouble and it was  _ fun _ . But there were also the times when Bucky would genuinely like a guy and find out that something bad happened to him somewhere away from the base, or. Or. Or. 

He also remembers his dad getting injured during a drill, and that being the absolute opposite of fun, and he remembers his mom getting sick for the first time while they were in Japan. He remembers more of the bad than he wishes he did. “Yeah,” he says, and he laughs a little to try to cover up any lull in the conversation he might have caused. “Yeah, sometimes I wish we were back at the arcades there.”

And Toro goes off about them, has Sam and Natasha entertained at least talking about all of the different games, but Bucky's in his own world, feeling as helpless as he did in the restaurant back then when the General told him and his sister that actually, Mom wasn't going to be getting better this time. “Hey,” Steve says, quietly, catching his attention. “Want to take a walk?”

“We haven't even gotten drinks yet,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, but I'm feeling a little claustrophobic, and they're in the middle of a conversation,” he answers. 

Bucky thinks about it, then nods his head. “Okay,” he says.

Steve taps Natasha on the arm. “Hey, going outside to get some air. Order something for me?”

“Sure,” Natasha says, and she watches Steve and Bucky subtly while they leave together, but not so subtly that Bucky doesn't notice. 

Once they're outside, Steve pulls his coat back on and turns to look at Bucky. “I recognize that face. You doing alright?” he asks, and Bucky laughs a little, but feels like he's been run over and it comes out with the sound. 

“It's—we've got very different memories, is all,” he says. “It's not a big deal.”

“Alright,” Steve says, willing to take what Bucky says, allowing him room. 

“I don't think your friend Natasha likes me,” Bucky says, not sure what else to do with the space, and knowing that he wouldn't be able to hold it back anyways.

That makes Steve laugh, but it's a little more genuine than Bucky's. “She's suspicious,” he says. “That's just who she is.”

“What does she have to be suspicious about?” Bucky asks. “What, that you guys actually work for the CIA and I'm a Russian spy? Also, a bookstore?”

“I did not say bookstore to her,” Steve answers, still laughing. “And no, we don't work for the CIA. Or FBI. I’m actually kind of irritated she did that though,” he continues, and he folds his arms across his shoulders and stares out into the parking lot. “I told her that I didn't want to talk about work.”

“Sorry Jim asked,” Bucky says.

“No, don't be—she just could have just left it at saying we work in an office building.” He looks at Bucky, and there's a nice orangey glow around him from the light bouncing from the streetlights. “It's Sam's fault for mentioning San Diego, anyway.”

“Which is why he changed subjects.”

“Yes.” Steve sighs and stretches his shoulders back. 

“My dad got really hurt one time,” Bucky says. “He's fine now, but it didn't seem like he was going to be, and my mom had just gotten sick for the first time, and we didn't think she was going to make it, either.” 

“And Toro sometimes forgets that.”

“Yes.” Bucky kicks the ground. “He can't help it.”

“Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt less.”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Bucky says, and he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. “He just doesn't think before he speaks.” He opens his eyes, fixes his shoulders. “Sorry. Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“To be honest, it was reminding me of my experiences with the army,” Steve says. 

“You served?”

He nods his head, gives a tight lipped smile. “I'm not ready to talk about it,” he says. “Sorry.”

“It's okay,” Bucky says. The General didn't even like talking about it, and it was his life. “Do you want to go back in?”

“I need another minute, but you can head in, Buck. It's cold.”

He likes it. He likes the easiness of the nickname, doesn't mind the chill. “It's September,” he says. “I think I can handle it, if you want the company.”

“If you don't mind,” Steve says.

“I really don't.” 

And the tightness in Steve's face is gone, and he looks at his feet. “Thanks,” he says, and the two of them watch cars for a minute until Steve moves, makes the indication that he's ready to go back in, and Bucky reads the movement right and has more certainty then that he knows what Steve's about. The restaurant feels less trap-like when he slides back into the booth and there's a whiskey sour waiting for him. 

“How was the walk?” Sam asks, and Steve looks at Bucky. 

“I think it was fine,” he says, and Bucky nods his head. “Who runs the store when you guys aren't there?” he asks.

“We uh. Closed it for the evening,” Bucky says.

“The owner lets you do that?” Natasha asks. 

“He stops by once a month,” Toro says. “It's really not a big deal. Family owned.”

“He knew our dads,” Bucky says. The whiskey feels like he's dropped a quarter in his gut when he takes a sip. “But we're the only two employees and he doesn't want to have to pay a third, so we're basically co-owners at this point.”

“I volunteer for their game nights,” Jim says. “Sometimes.”

“Do you like it?” Steve asks, and Bucky shrugs.

“I can't see myself doing anything else.” He's been there since high school. It was the first point of stability he had. He doesn't want to leave. They got Steve a gin & tonic. “What do you guys do outside of work?”

“We go to the movies a lot,” Sam says. “Steve stays home.”

“I went to a baseball game,” he offers.

“Because you won tickets and I wouldn't take them off your hands.”

The conversation continues like this—probing, from both sides, not getting very far, Toro diverting to something to protect Bucky and Natasha doing the same to avoid anything that might bother Steve, et cetera. Bucky listens without saying much, but finds he’s really not listening all that well, because at some point, he tunes out, lets his ear catch on the music in the bar, and finds himself buzzed. Not in a bad way, but in a pleasant way, and when the waitress comes by to ask if they want anything else, he's glad when Steve orders a round of water for everyone. 

And soon, it's time to leave, though he and Steve linger a little. “Bucky, you coming with us?” Toro asks.

“I could give you a ride, if you wanted to talk,” Steve says, and Bucky looks at Toro, whose eyes get wide because for all the years they've known each other, they've developed a kind of facial language, and he's telling Bucky that if he doesn't let Steve drive him home, he's never going to hear the end of it. Natasha and Sam are watching too, smoking again before they leave.

“To talk,” Bucky says.

“Yes,” Steve answers. 

“Alright,” he says, and everyone says their goodbyes, and Bucky follows Steve to his car, climbs into the passenger seat. Steve turns the engine on, keeps his face forward and hands on the steering wheel. The car's almost immaculate, sparing a few leaves on the floor and a couple of quarters in the cup holder. “Thanks for the ride,” Bucky says.

“I'm gay,” Steve says. He looks like he's surprised himself by saying so, but also can't stop his mouth from working. “I work for a comic book company, and I'm a famous illustrator within the illustration world, and if you're not okay with that, I don't have to drive you home.”

Bucky worries that he's taking too long to answer, because Steve hasn't actually moved. “Oh,” Bucky says. He swallows, because it's been some time since he's actually had to come out to anyone. “Well. I am too. Gay, not an illustrator.”

And Steve lets out a sigh of relief and says, “Oh, thank God,” and he closes his eyes for a moment. “Then I haven't read any of this wrong, have I?”

“Well, I'm not a mind reader,” Bucky says, and he plays with the seatbelt. 

“Alright,” Steve says. “Where do you live?”

“Over on Park,” he answers. “Is that why Natasha was suspicious?”

“Yes. She knew you worked at a comic book store.”

He's going to screw this up. His hands are sweaty and Steve has the radio low while he drives, the light from the dashboard light casting a strange glow over the both of them. “I didn't really want Toro and Jim to come,” he says.

“I didn't want Nat and Sam to come either, to be honest,” Steve says. “Are you closer to the church or further from it?”

“It's like right across the street.”

“Got it. No, it's good that Nat and Toro just went back and forth like they did—the teal one?”

“Yeah, we're the parking space on the left.”

Steve pulls in, and Bucky's heart feels like it's going to come out of his chest when Steve puts the car in park. “Well, it was a good night,” Steve says, and Bucky says yeah, and moves, leans over the center console. 

“I don't do this very often,” he says, and Steve looks confused for a second before realizing what's happening, and by then Bucky's kissing him and Steve’s kissing back. Steve pulls back suddenly though, and Bucky feels like an idiot, like it'sbeen driven right through him. “Oh my god. You just wanted to be friends.”

“Um, wrong. No. I do not just want to be friends. Come here,” Steve says, and he pulls Bucky back in to keep kissing him before pulling back again. “But I'm 38 years old, and it's a school night, and I still have to pick my nephew up from his friend's house.” He kisses Bucky again, and it seems less and less like he really wants to be doing anything else, based on the way his fingers start getting tangled in Bucky's hair. 

“What's wrong with being 38?” Bucky mumbles against Steve's mouth.

“I can't just make out with you in a car,” he says, like he's trying to retain some dignity. 

“We're already making out.”

“I know. Can I walk you to the door?”

“No, the neighbors,” Bucky says, and Steve says, “oh, right,”  then neither of them make any move to stop kissing. “Okay, okay,” Bucky says, finally. “You said you have to go.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Make it up to me?”

“When?”

“Call me when you get home.” 

Steve smiles at him. “I can do that,” he says. And he and Bucky untangle themselves, and Bucky knows what he probably looks like when he walks up to the porch by himself and lets himself in, and Steve doesn't pull away until the door is shut behind him. He's in his apartment for a few minutes before Toro's knocking at the door, demanding to be let in. He takes his time; he wants to savor it. He leaves his hair a mess when he goes to open the door.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve’s white-knuckling the steering wheel the entire drive to pick up Teddy. He wants to bask in what just happened, wants to stop and think about it, revel in it,  _ enjoy _ the fact that Bucky kissed him, drive back there and keep at it. Is he speeding? Speedometer says no, but it feels like he must be, the way everything outside of the car melts into the dark. No—that’s just him. He was supposed to be there to pick up Teddy about ten minutes ago, but unlike his neighbors, the Kaplans probably won’t judge him for being a little late. He still turns the radio off when he pulls onto the street, feeling like he needs there to be more silence so he can concentrate better as he slows down and approaches the driveway. 

Bucky still kissed him, though.

He waits in the driveway, watches his headlights against the Kaplans’ garage door, waits until the front door swings open and Teddy comes hustling out, zipping his jacket and pulling his backpack over his shoulder. Teddy waits for Steve to lean over and unlock the door, and then climbs awkwardly into the seat. “Sorry I'm a little late,” Steve says, genuinely. Teddy grunts, clicking his seatbelt in.

“I didn't really notice,” he says. “Empire Strikes Back was on tv and we got caught up in it.”

“Did you also get caught up on your homework?” It's not that Steve doesn't want to have the conversation, it's that it's rote feeling and his mind is elsewhere. He notices a cop parked across the street while he's driving and has to slow down again, doesn't want to get pulled over. Is conscious of the fact that Teddy's staring out the window, knows that driving makes him uncomfortable most of the time anyway, and wants to distract him as much as he needs to distract himself.

“Yeah, homework's done,” Teddy mumbles. 

“Did you eat?”

“Billy's parents left money for pizza.” 

“Sorry I pulled you away from Star Wars.”

“It's fine. We've seen it a million times anyway.” His voice says it's not fine, but Steve doesn't press. “Uh, Uncle Steve?”

“What's up?” 

They're about five minutes from home, the point of the drive where everything starts feeling familiar again. If the radio was still up, he'd have to turn it down about now. Teddy looks forward, and Steve can see that he's fidgeting from the corner of his eye. “There's this show tomorrow night,” he says. “I was wondering if I could go.”

Steve's immediate response in his head is “why not”? but he knows he can't just say yes. Or at least feels like he can't. Like how he couldn't just say yes to making out in his car, or yes to letting Teddy sleep over Billy's on a Thursday. “Who's going?” he asks, pulling into the driveway.

“Kate. Billy. Eli.”

“Ah, the usual suspects.” Turns off the car, grabs his briefcase from the backseat while Teddy gets ready to get out. “Do you need a ride?”

“No, Kate's mom is going to drive us.”

“How much money do you need?”

“Does that mean I can go?”

Steve looks at him, frowns. “Why wouldn't I say you could?” he asks. “As long homework and everything else is done, I don't see why not.” He closes the car door and looks across to Teddy. “You're allowed to have fun, you know.”

Teddy's shoulders relax a little. “I guess so,” he says, and he looks like he wants to say more, but doesn't—never does, Steve's aware—and leads the way into the house. 

“Kate—I've heard her name around before, haven't I?” Steve asks, feeling like he should. 

“Um. Yeah. We're friends.” Teddy pulls his backpack over his shoulder a little higher. “She's nice.” 

“That's great!”

Teddy's cheeks get pink. “Uncle Steve—no offense or anything, but I really don't want to talk about girls.” 

Pushed too far, Steve thinks. “Alright. Well, I'll leave a few bucks on the table for you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Uncle Steve.”

And once Teddy's upstairs, Steve allows himself to think: Bucky kissed him. He goes to his office, picks up the phone receiver, and punches in Bucky's number. Feels stupid by the second ring, is going to hang up on the third, and then, “Hello?”

“Hey, it's Steve,” he says (asks), and sits down in front of the drawing table, looks through the blinds at his neighbor taking the dog out for a walk. 

“Hey,” Bucky says. 

“You told me to call, so I'm. Calling.”

Bucky laughs on the other end.. “I’m glad you did,” he says, and even though Steve has no idea how his apartment must look, what its layout must be, he can imagine Bucky leaning against a doorway, phone not mounted on the wall but sitting on a phone table, telephone books underneath it. Maybe. Or—there’s a phone in his bedroom, not the kitchen, or. Or. 

Or he’s floating through the wire, which is probably how Steve would draw it. 

“Are you still there?” Bucky asks, and Steve nods his head before answering, “yes,” and Bucky sighs. “I’m from Virginia,” he says, and Steve blinks, has to think, remember their conversation. “When you asked where we were from and Toro said—well, he’s not  _ wrong _ , but it’s. I was born in Virginia.”

“Do you ever miss it?” Steve asks, leaning his forearms against the table. 

“I wasn’t really old enough to miss it,” Bucky says. “But sometimes I have a lot of what-if questions. I don’t think I would have stayed.”

“Virginia’s not so bad,” Steve says. “But I wouldn’t have stayed, either.”

“Where are you from?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Originally? College.” He doesn’t elaborate, hoping that Bucky understands the other reason why he ended up having to leave; not wanting to talk about a million other things that were going on in his life then. They’ll get there. Bucky doesn’t probe, but makes a sound like he’s adjusting, getting more comfortable wherever it is he’s sitting. 

He could always asks, he realizes, about what Bucky’s doing, but the idea of doing so sounds lecherous, and he’s relieved when Bucky changes the subject and asks, “Do you watch TV?”

“Sometimes,” he says. “This is kind of embarrassing, but I’m kind of behind on a lot of pop culture. I don’t really know what happened.”

“That’s alright. What do you watch?”

“Star Trek reruns,” he says. “Planet Earth, when it runs late and I can’t sleep.”

“Star Trek is good,” Bucky says. “What about movies?”

“This feels like an interview.”

“Maybe it is.”

That makes Steve smile a little bit. “Sam, Nat, and I went to see the new Texas Chainsaw movie.”

“Before or after going to San Diego?”

“After—it didn’t come out until after we got back.”

“Did you like San Diego?”

“I stayed in the hotel room most of the time.” He takes a breath. “What’s your favorite movie?”

“Do I have to pick one?”

“Yes.”

“Which decade?”

“Any.”

“This is an incredible unfair question, Steve. I have seen so many movies. I have so many VHS tapes.” He groans and Steve laughs. “We’ve already established that I can’t even answer biographical facts about myself without at least two hours to think about the question.”

Steve laughs harder, then catches himself, worried about possibly being found out by Teddy—though, he thinks, what’s there to find out? “Alright. This year.”

He hears Bucky breathing—it’s soft, not huffing into the receiver but just barely noticeable. “Um. Probably the Fly.”

“With Geena Davis?”

“Yes.”

“She’s good.”

“I know.” 

“What was the book you were reading, when I first came into the store?” 

“Oh.” Bucky pauses, sounds like he must be embarrassed. “We get these mass market paperbacks sometimes,” he says, “and it’s not like they’re expensive—they just get pulped if nobody buys them, and I guess it’s something different, and besides they’re really Toro’s—” He sighs. “It’s. Um. Debbie Macomber? I don’t know if you’ve ever read her, she’s actually not bad and it’s.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” Steve says. 

“Steve,” Bucky starts, then waits. “I want to see you again.”

“So I passed the interview?”

Bucky laughs, and it makes Steve close his eyes and smile. “Yes. Yeah.” 

Steve wants to imagine Bucky comfortable, pressed into the corner of a couch, reclining. He wants to know the interior of Bucky's home, wants to know what he eats, his mannerisms. It scares him a little; Steve hasn't  _ wanted _ in what feels like ages. (He can remember wanting, though.) He taps the edge of his desk, looks at an unfinished watercolor for the children's book he was commissioned for, thinks that the colors could be so much more vibrant. “I could take you to the movies,” he says, and he leans back a little. 

“Yeah?” Bucky's voice goes a little breathless. “A horror movie? A comedy?”

“It depends on what's out. What you want to see.”

“Let me run something by you?”

“Shoot.”

“I don't get out of work until around eleven tomorrow night,” Bucky says, “but—if you're willing to go out late—there's a theater which does midnight showings.”

Steve knows the theater; he and Sam and Nat used to go pretty often. “It's the one that gets a lot of the arthouse films, right?”

“Yeah—you've been?”

“A few times,” he says. 

“It’s not too late for you, is it? Not a school night?” Bucky’s teasing him a little, and Steve likes it so much he feels like his cheeks are on fire.

“Not a school night. Not too late. Does it matter what they’re showing?”

“No,” Bucky says. “How deeply invested are you in actually watching the movie?” Point. Bucky yawns at the other side of the phone, the sound drawn out as he must be pulling it away from his face. “Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be. It’s late.”

“It’s like, not even midnight,” Bucky says, but he’s yawning again. 

“I’ve got to get up early in the morning. But—tomorrow, I can pick you up around eleven?”

“Yes.” Bucky pauses. “I’m sorry if I came off as too forward tonight.”

Too forward? Steve frowns. “You weren’t. God. It’s just been a long time. Embarrassingly long time.”

“Me, too.” He sounds wistful, or something close to it. “I just—don’t want you to think that’s all this is, though, okay? Like I do really mean it—I want to get to know you. I want to be your friend.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, because that’s it, isn’t it? Even if it turns out that they’re not—that they don’t fit together, he’s been so lonely otherwise. Sam and Nat are great. They’re good friends. But they can’t help that their lives are more involved with each other; they’re married; can Steve expect anything else? No—it wouldn’t be fair. “It’s the same for me, too.” 

“Good,” Bucky says. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Steve.”

“See you then.”

And he hangs up, and stares at the ceiling, and can’t stop smiling, again. He leaves his office, heads up the stairs and notices that Teddy’s light is still on, the door open a fraction, which has become a signal that he’s still up. Steve pokes his head into the room, sees Teddy at his desk painting the model airplane he’d built back in the summer, dissatisfied with the paintjob the kit came with. “It’s still a school night,” he says, and Teddy shrugs his shoulders, doesn’t look up from what he’s doing. “If you end up sleeping in, you’re not going to be able to go to that show.”

He sighs—something Steve’s noticed teenagers do too much. “I’ll be up in time,” he says, and Steve comes into the room. Teddy’s good at craftsmanship; it was an easy bonding point for both of them where sports could not be during Teddy’s recovery from the accident. 

“Can’t sleep?” Steve asks, leaning against Teddy’s bureau.

“Can’t figure out what color I want the cockpit to be. It’s the wrong shade of gray.”

“Gray’s gray, Ted.”

He rolls his eyes. “Sure.” But he’s still comparing three different shades. “I was going to make the outside glossier before putting the decals on, but I think the decals themselves look kind of cheap, and I could probably paint better ones.”

“You’d need a firm brush and a steady hand.”

“Or a paint pen.”

“I guess a paint pen would work too, but what’s wrong with the decals?” 

Teddy looks up at Steve like he wouldn’t understand, even though Steve has his own collection of model cars that he painted when he was about Teddy’s age, somewhere up in the attic, salvaged from when he and his brother had to clean out their mother’s house. “They’re corny,” Teddy says, finally. 

Steve doesn’t buy it, but there’s really only so much you can control when you’re a teenager (only so much you can control at all, ever, but it’s worse then, he’s sure, thinking back on it), and if Teddy wants to realize that the decals are a lot cleaner than what he’s probably going to get after he drips white paint onto the black gloss he went over the original pieces with, then that’s his prerogative. “Well, as corny as they are, the model’s still going to be here tomorrow. What’s up?” 

Teddy’s shoulders tense, and he dips his paintbrush into one of the jars of brush cleaner on his desk. It’s probably a good sign, since it means he’s ready to start cleaning up for the night, at least. “It’s really nothing,” he says. Huffs. Starts to bleed the rest of the paint from the brush into one of the rags he keeps with his kit. 

“Did something happen with Billy? You’ve seemed off since I picked you up.”

“Nothing happened with Billy.” It comes too quick. “It’s—it has to do with—Kate.”

“Kate Bishop.”

“Yes.” He’s avoiding eye contact; that’s not the full story, and he’s lying. But what can Steve do about it? He frowns, unfolds his arms from across his chest, and points at the paint swatches.

“Since it’s not on the plastic itself, you’re not going to know how it’s going to look when they dry, if you’re really that concerned about whether or not it’s the right shade of gray.” He sighs. “It’s fine, if you weren’t doing exactly what you told me you guys were going to do, but if it’s anything serious, then you’ve got to let me know about it. I won’t get mad at you.” He picks up the cardboard with the swatches, holds it up to the desk light. They’re the same shade. He’s only got one bottle of paint out. Steve puts it back down. “Get some sleep.”

Steve’s about to leave when Teddy turns around and says, “Uncle Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“You really won’t get mad?” he asks.

He feels his face relax into a smile—it’s not his default expression, he knows (has been called sour by plenty of people) but it’s comfortable anyway. “Of course, Teddy. I know that you’re a good kid.” For a moment, he waits, expecting Teddy to say something else, but when he doesn’t, turns around and mumbles something that sounds like “Thanks,” Steve has to take it. Something still isn’t sitting right, but if it’s important, Steve trusts that Teddy will tell him. 

Even though he shuts the door behind him, he’s still aware of the light coming from the crack below when he gets to his own room, and waits until he sees the light go out before he feels like he can really get into bed. There’s a nagging worry though, an unsettledness about there maybe being something wrong with Teddy after all, and he recognizes the anxiety a little, has to talk himself out of it in as much of a convincing way he can. 

And maybe it’s selfish, but his last thoughts before falling to sleep, once he’s managed to push the worry away for the night to be dealt with later, are about Bucky, and about being kissed, and about how much he’s missed it.


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky's waiting outside the store when Steve pulls up, thinking about how in the morning either he or Toro is going to have to make a bank run for change, trying not to think about how anxious he is now that he knows for a fact that this is a date. Anxious or nervous or both. He tried combing his hair again but still doesn't think it looks good, is self-conscious of his denim jacket even though he knows the cut's flattering on him even when he buttons it up, doesn't want to look too dressed up because they're just two dudes going to the movies. Doesn't want anyone to get the wrong (the absolute right) idea. “Do you usually close alone?” Steve asks him when he leans over and opens the door from the inside. Bucky takes the door handle, climbs in, and likes that Steve doesn't immediately move out of his personal space bubble. 

“Not always,” he says. “But it's usually only me or Toro working in the store. We keep telling Nick that we've got to hire someone else.” And Steve smells good, and he's then out of Bucky's space, both hands on the steering wheel.

“It seems like it could be dangerous, just being in the shop alone.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“I guess I grew up in a more dangerous neighborhood than this one.” Steve taps his fingers against the steering wheel, leans forward a little to check both ways before going through the intersection. “Besides being on your own, how was work?”

“Not super interesting,” Bucky says, and he buckles up, tries not to stare so obviously at Steve. “How does it work for you?”

“What, work?”

“Yeah.”

“Nat wasn't lying. I go to the office every day. Sam’s the writer and I'm the illustrator on one project and it's a pretty collaborative effort, so we go back and forth. For the other projects it's nice to be able to go to work and say, this is what I will get done, and then leave it when I go home.”

“You went back to the office the other night though.”

“I've been accused of being a workaholic,” Steve says. 

“You weren't working before you came to get me, were you?”

Steve laughs. “Uh, no. Don't make fun of me, but I went home to take a nap.” He takes a left, and they probably could have walked to the theater, but this is so much easier, Bucky thinks. “I also needed to make sure Teddy's chores were done, and that he remembered that I left him money before he took off with his friends.” 

He wants to ask now how long Steve's been taking care of his nephew, since it's clear that he is that parental figure (legal guardian, he thinks the term is), but feels like he needs to bite back on the question, like they’re not quite there yet, even if one day they will be. “I won't make fun of you if you promise not to laugh at me if I fall asleep,” he says instead. 

“I won't laugh, but if you're tired, we can reschedule,” Steve says. 

“I'll live,” Bucky says. “I think I can keep my eyes open long enough.” 

“Oh. Then good.” Steve bites his lip, then pulls into the public parking behind the theater. “I did want to do something first though, before we get out of the car.”

“Yeah?”

Steve kisses him, places his palm against Bucky's cheek and makes it a really good kiss, one that ends too soon. “Wanted to do that,” Steve says, “if it's okay.” 

“If it's ok—” Bucky's sputtering a little, pulls Steve back in for another kiss. “Mister I can't makeout with you in my car because I'm 38 years old.”

“We're not making out right now,” Steve says, though looks like he wants to be. He turns the car engine off and swallows. “What's this movie you wanted me to see, anyway?”

“Have you seen Return of the Living Dead?”

“Like the Romero movies?”

“It's not a Romero movie.” And he doesn't want to give it away, but he can't help but gab all the way up to the ticket booth, up to waiting in line in the alley alongside the theater next to everyone else who's there to see the movie, and at some point he's not even talking about the movie anymore but still  _ talking _ and Steve is looking at him like it could be anything and he'd still be able to tell him every single word that came out of his mouth. It's punk rock zombies, it's culturally important, Bucky has it on VHS so realistically he knows that they're not really here for the movie but for the experience of going to the movies. Their knuckles brush against each other and it feels electric, exactly like sneaking out to the movies once he and Toro were back in the US and smoking weed in the back. It feels like a lot of things and nothing else. 

“Where are we sitting?” Steve asks him, close to his ear, and he shivers, waves over his shoulder ‘this way’ and gets them into the far back corner of the theater, where there's a step separating them from the (empty) row in front of them, where the wall of the exit juts out enough that they're relatively enclosed. There's privacy, and Steve's about to grab his hand when someone else seems to have had the same idea about the spot and takes the seat next to them.

Bucky wants to scream because of course! Of course this guy would sit next to them instead of anywhere else in the theater, and of course three of his friends would sit down next to him, filling their row. “Well,” he says to Steve, and he feels a little heartbroken. “Get ready for some brain eating.”

“I'm ready for it, I think,” Steve says, and even with the four other people next to them, he still reaches down, discreetly and under the armrest, to touch Bucky's knee. The lights in the theater hall go down, and the curtains pull back to reveal the screen. Steve’s hand retreats for a moment, then returns when his arm casually leans over the armrest, taking up more space than strictly necessary but so, _so_ welcomed. The other patrons don't notice; they’ve got drinks, they're going back and forth among each other. 

This is still safe, Bucky realizes, and he turns his hand over so that it can fit against Steve's comfortably. Steve shifts, pulls his arm back so he can shrug out of his jacket, and then uses it to cover their hands when his goes to squeeze Bucky's again. And he is watching the movie; he turns his head slightly towards Bucky's ear every so often (giving him more of those earlier shivers) to ask him short questions, and then if sometimes him asking a question feels a little like a ghost kiss coupled with another squeeze to Bucky's hand or light strokes along the tendons of his wrist, well. 

Bucky is most certainly not watching the movie, is actually a little embarrassed by how good those hand touches make him feel. Returns a couple of them as he can, whispers answers back to Steve, but knows he's not quite as good at it as Steve is. But he sinks back into his seat, and every so often just looks at Steve’s profile instead of the screen, and then looks back before Steve can catch him staring. There are a couple of genuinely frightening moments on screen then, and then they get to where the zombie on the slab is explaining how brains are the only thing that satisfies the pain they feel—that the pain is so constant, that it's not their fault what they need. Nobody wants to be in pain forever.  _ Return of the Living Dead  _ isn't a date movie; that's kind of the point. It's still over too soon, but Steve's waiting to move, so he's waiting, too. “What'd you think?” he asks.

Steve smiles at him easily. “It's different, but I think I liked it.” 

“Enough to watch it again?”

“Maybe not tonight, but.” He raises an eyebrow at Bucky. “Yeah, I could see it again.” 

They're the last few people leaving the theater, and Bucky stares at the pattern of the carpet when he says, “It was pretty slick, what you did with the jacket.”

“I've been to one or two movies in my day,” Steve answers. “But I don’t really think those guys were paying attention to anyone but themselves, anyway.” They start making moves to get out of the theater house, into the lobby, and it’s after two in the morning. Bucky should be exhausted, but he’s not, and it doesn’t look like Steve is particularly tired, either. 

If anything, Bucky’s feeling buzzy. He doesn’t say anything while he walks with Steve back to the car, waits until they’re in it before turning to Steve and saying, “I know it’s kind of late, but when you drop me off, did you want to. Stay a while?” 

“I could probably stay for a little bit,” Steve says, and his expression is soft, even in the harder light of the dashboard. 

“Okay. Cool.” Cool. It makes Steve laugh even though Bucky can’t believe he just said “cool,” and Steve drives out of the parking lot while Bucky plays with the radio. “What do you listen to?”

“Whatever’s on,” he answers.

“I figured you for an NPR kind of guy.”

“Sometimes. Usually not. It’s hard to listen to the news sometimes.” Steve’s expression changes and he laughs a little, but not in a humorous way. “Sometimes, when I hear the things that the administration does, or what people do to each other, it actually gets me really angry. I’ll watch the local news sometimes, though. So I guess I forgot that when I told you what I watch on television.”

Bucky thinks about it. “If it’s the news, it doesn’t really count as television, so you’re fine,” he says. “But I get what you’re saying.” Sometimes, Bucky thinks about the Reagan campaign sign the General had in his front yard. He doesn’t let it keep him up at night, but he remembers it anyway. 

“I do have a couple of Rush cassettes, though,” Steve says. “And REO Speedwagon. It’s not all I listen to, but it’s what I listen to in the car.” 

“What do you listen to outside of the car?”

“What movies do you watch?”

All of them, Bucky thinks, because he’s seen a  _ lot _ of goddamn movies. “It’s not like I can just list them all off,” he says. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Before Bucky’s even really aware of it, they’re pulling into the parking space next to the apartment, and there’s a strong chance of a repeat from the night before, except it’s late, and it really would be so much better to makeout with Steve inside (even getting to experience the apparently universal high school event of making out in your date’s car was exceptionally good, and left Bucky exceptionally breathless), where it’s warm, where there wouldn’t be the gear shift digging into his arm or ribcage. 

“I’m on the first floor,” Bucky says, unbuckling when Steve’s unbuckling. “Toro and Jim live upstairs, but Jim’s probably at the firehouse which means Toro’s either asleep or playing video games and waiting for me to get back.”

“You guys are pretty close, huh?” Steve asks, and Bucky laughs. 

“If we were any closer, we’d be conjoined twins,” he says. 

“And,” Steve says, while locking the car, then jogging over to Bucky’s side to join him up the front steps, “Jim and Toro are—”

“Yes,” Bucky says. 

“Oh,” Steve says. “Good.”

“Jim thinks you’re handsome, if you’re interested,” Bucky says, grinning. “He told me so himself.”

“I’m glad Jim thinks so,” Steve laughs. 

Bucky unlocks the front door, turns towards his apartment on the landing and unlocks that, too. “I think so, too,” he says, and it surprises him how quiet his voice is, surprises him that he’s feeling, suddenly, a little vulnerable.

“Well, that’s good, because I think you’re handsome, too,” Steve says, and Bucky turns around to look at him, and his heart’s beating out of his chest because Steve just  _ looks _ cool, again, like when he asked him out for drinks. 

And Bucky would ask how he does that, but instead he pulls him close to kiss, and Steve follows him in and closes the door behind them. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an incredibly short chapter; the next one (when it's finished) will be longer.

Steve stops, suddenly, and says, “I hate to do this, but I can’t stay the night.” They’re on Bucky’s couch, necking, and Bucky looks at him a little hurt. “It’s not you.”

“Haven’t heard that one before.” He slides out from under Steve, runs a hand through his hair. Steve’s heart has come up to his throat. 

“This is going to sound pretty lame,” Steve says, because he knows that’s exactly what it’s going to sound like. “But I need to make sure I’m home tonight because of my nephew.” 

Bucky looks at him suspiciously. “Oh?”

“He was in a pretty serious car accident a few months ago.” Almost a year. “I’m his legal guardian. Sometimes, when he’s at a friend’s house, he has--he needs to come home. I don’t know. It’s a--a trauma thing.” Sometimes, Steve would wake up in the hospital, after getting shot, and he’d feel the same thing, like all he wanted was to be home, a panic seizing in his chest and urging him up, urging him to get out of the bed and pace, pace, pace. They’re two different kinds of traumas, but similar enough. 

The tops of Bucky’s cheeks are still pink. “Oh,” he says, because there isn’t much else he can say. Steve feels like he’s effectively killed the moment. “Were you in the accident too or--”

“No--I was out of state.”

“Then you probably get anxious, too,” Bucky says.

“Sometimes, yeah.” Too anxious. Not nail-biting, but cuticle-biting anxious. Steve avoids looking at Bucky, then forces himself to, takes in the faint lines at the corners of Bucky’s eyes and where his smile would be, if he were smiling. “It’s a hard thing to explain,” he says. Not being there. Knowing that, realistically, had he been there, he wouldn’t have been able to do all that much, if he wasn’t also hurt, too. The phone call early in the morning and how sometimes, sometimes when the phone rings and it’s still dark in his room, his heart comes out of his chest--

“Then what’s your curfew?” 

“My--”

“You know. It’s like, almost three a.m. right now--what time do you need to be home by?” 

His shoulders relax a little. “Probably soon,” he says. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting.”

“That’s okay. You can always make it up to me later.” And Bucky’s coming back to him, pushing his fingers up through the sides of Steve’s hair, and Steve groans, pulls him closer. “A heads up would be nice next time, though,” Bucky says against his mouth, and he grunts.

“Yeah. Yeah, I should’ve--I just didn’t really think about how late it was.”

“It was a midnight showing,” Bucky says, but his voice feels far away, and Steve’s got his hand up the back of Bucky’s shirt, and his skin is warm, so,  _ so _ warm. 

“Usually in bed by midnight,” he protests, weakly, turning his head and kissing Bucky’s neck. “I should probably. Slow down.” 

“Sure,” Bucky says. He’s not pulling away and Steve isn’t about to, either, until he gets that pang in his gut again--guilt, it’s guilt, he’s sure--and he sighs and kisses Bucky before pulling his hand back. “So it’s curfew time?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he doesn’t--he doesn’t want to leave. He wishes, not for the first time, that he was who and where he was last year. It’s impossible. It’s not that he doesn’t want to take care of Teddy, either, but sometimes--like now--he wishes he didn’t have any responsibilities except to himself. “When’s the next time you’re free?” 

He pulls his shoes back on, and Bucky hovers, ready to hand him his coat. “Monday afternoon,” he says. “If you’re free.”

“Yes. Yeah. Um. I get out at five. Should I--”

“Dinner?”

“Where?”

“We’ll figure it out. Pick me up here?” 

Steve stands up, pulls his jacket on, then pulls Bucky into a big kiss. Doesn’t want to pull away when Bucky’s arms are there, holding him from floating off. “Yes. Good night,” he says, because contrary to the good feelings that are coming off Bucky, he’s still got that panic symptom and fear growing the longer he’s away from the phone, away from a beeper or anything that could get ahold of him if there’s something wrong. There are still a few neon lights on along the way home, but most of the world has gone to bed, and he’s got streetlights and he’s got music loud in his head, and he doesn’t even think to turn it down when he gets into the neighborhood (they’ll all think it’s teenagers, anyway), but just pulls into the driveway and turns off the car. 

There’s a blinking light on the answering machine. Steve’s heart feels like it’s stopped, and he closes his eyes, forces himself to hit play, expecting the worst, getting--not. “Hey Uncle Steve, I’m just letting you know that I’m going to be staying at Billy’s tonight. Hope you have a good night with Sam and Natasha.” End of message--nothing dire or life-threatening, and now Steve is the one fighting the urge to call Billy’s parents to make sure they’re there. He probably could have stayed out later. He probably made the right choice to come home. 

He kicks his shoes off, pulling them off by stepping on the heel, leaves his jacket on the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Feels too worked up to go to sleep, knows what he could do instead, feels embarrassed and guilty about  _ that _ , too, thinks about Bucky’s face and the fact that he was--oh. He wonders what Bucky’s doing, then goes into his office and looks at the watercolor illustrations he’s got on his desk. They haven’t been working--the author doesn’t like what he’s been sending, the editor is getting frustrated in the in between, and they’re on two separate coasts so having the time to actually talk has been impossible. 

It’s a stupid kid’s story anyway, and he knows he could write a better one if he just knew how to make words work the same way he can get pictures to. 

That becomes something to do, something he sits down with. Animals are safer than people in kids’ books. It could be a story about anything. About friendship. About companionship. He doesn’t even need the words, if it’s a good enough illustration. Someone else did something like that...Steve’s exhausted and wired and the clock tells him it’s beyond bedtime. His skin feels like it’s on fire and he feels weird about doing anything to help it. He’s supposed to go on his morning run in two and a half hours. Go to bed, Steve, you can work on whatever in the morning. He should have realized how badly the late showing would screw him up (he didn’t even go out at night at Comic Con when Sam and Nat invited him), but the idea of doing anything with Bucky--and having the opportunity to do so--outweighed the negatives. They still do, he thinks, and he looks at the watercolors, thinks about the fact that this kids’ author sent him color chips from the paint section of a hardware store to tell him--the guy who went to art school--what color he should be using. 

He might just call the editor on Monday and tell them that he doesn’t want to work with someone who tries telling him how to do his job. He might just make his own book.

A yawn surprises him, coming out of him from nowhere. There’s no fighting it. He’s got to get ready for bed, and he turns off the light of the office, heads upstairs for his bedroom, then the attached bathroom to turn the shower on. Not a long shower, he tells himself, just enough to--and he imagines Bucky, cheeks still red, a thrill through his spine at the way he shivered from the neck kisses, and he’s like,  _ seriously _ too old for this, but still. Remembers reminders from drill sergeants about what breaks plumbing and reaches out for a tissue, before also remembering that it’s his house, and he’s the only one who uses this bathroom, so he knows exactly how often the drain has ever been clogged (never). He presses his forehead against the tile and sighs. Waits for the phone to ring, is satisfied when it doesn’t, turns off the shower, and gets out. If there weren’t the sliding glass doors on the edge of the tub, he’d be sitting there for another eternity, so he’s lucky there’s something to push him to his room, to his bed, to under the covers. 

He doesn’t wake up in time for a run, but he wakes up in time for church, notices that Teddy’s still not home, and gets ready by himself, goes to mass by himself. Thinks about taking communion, but doesn’t for what must be the millionth time in a row. 

Teddy’s making grilled cheese sandwiches in the kitchen while Billy fills out character sheets at the kitchen table when Steve gets home. “You boys have a good time last night?” he asks, grabbing himself an apple. 

“Uh,” Teddy says at the same time Billy says, “Yeah, absolutely.” 

“How’s Kate?” Steve asks, trying. 

Teddy rolls his eyes and Billy looks over at him, frowning. “Yeah, Teddy, how’s Kate?”

“She’s fine,” Teddy says. “The show wasn’t what we thought it’d be.”

“It was definitely something,” Billy says, no longer looking at Teddy. 

“Worth talking about?”

They both say “no” at the same time. “Didn’t you go out last night, Uncle Steve?” Teddy asks, deflecting. 

Steve lied about where he was going. “Yeah,” he says. “Movies. Got out late, so I didn’t get your message until later. Thanks for calling, by the way.”

“You told me to call if there was a change of plans, so I did.”

“Still. I’m glad you did.” 

Sensing that continuing to probe would just make things more uncomfortable, Steve leaves the kitchen, and heads to his office. He looks at the watercolors again and despairs, picks up the phone, and dials Sam’s number. “Hello,” Natasha answers, and he feels guilty, but unable to hang up now.

“Hey Nat, it’s Steve. Is Sam in?”

“Yeah,” she says, and he can hear, when she puts the phone down to call for him, the sound of Jane Fonda’s workout video somewhere in the background. 

“Nat, you can hang up, I’ve got it!” Sam shouts away from the receiver. “How was your date?”

“Great, but I have a question for you.” 

“What’s up?”

“How’d you feel about writing a kid’s book with me?”

There’s a pause. “Are you really calling me on a Sunday to ask me to do more work.”

“It’s not a super long process, and I’ve already got half the idea.” 

“We’re working two ongoing titles right now,” Sam reminds him. “Steve. Do you really think we have time to do another project? Aren’t you about to start seriously seeing someone? Aren’t I a newlywed with a wife I should spend more time with?” 

“I don’t know what to do if I’m not working.” It’s his own fault for making his hobby his job. “I got--the writer I’m working with for this job isn’t listening, and I had to walk away last night because I’m--”

“Steve, what?”

“Let’s think about it, alright?” Steve asks. 

“I am your best friend. I will not write a children’s story with you because you didn’t get laid last night.” 

“It’s not that easy.”

“I know. I know you, it’s never going to  _ be _ that easy. But I’m still not going to write a kid’s book. I am not well-rounded in my writing styles. The closest I’ll come to a kid’s book is Titans. Which I’m not on. You illustrate them all the time, are you telling me you can’t come up with one story?”

Steve takes a deep breath. “Maybe I can.”

“You’re freaking out right now.”

“I’ve been freaking out since before the date, but this is unrelated.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll think about writing a kid’s book.”

“Thank you.” Sam hangs up before Steve does, and Steve’s left feeling like he’s still on edge. There’s no one else he can think about calling, though, not with the timezones and long distance charges, anyway, and besides, it’s frustration more than anything else and Sam was right. I need a nap, is what Steve thinks, but he goes to the living room instead, hears Billy and Teddy arguing as they go upstairs and remembers to shout, “Make sure you do the dishes!” even if it comes out half-hearted. He’s got plenty of reading to do, plenty of things to take up his time. 

He’s two pages into  _ The Light Fantastic _ before the comfort of the couch has him asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I've just about finished my master's degree, so my thesis is where I was the past few months. Whoops.  
> 2\. Imagine if Paper Bag Princess was something to come out in 1986 instead of 1980, and Steve's the one to illustrate it. Or something like it. Although I imagine Steve's children's books to be more in the vein of Richard Scarry.  
> 3\. Expect more frequent updates now that I have an idea of exactly how long this work will be (there are three major events which need to happen) and I have significantly more free time, given the fact that I'm just about done with grad school for now.

Bucky has a mug of coffee in front of him while Toro occupies his kitchen, cooking bacon and eggs and french toast. The store is opens late on Sundays because neither of them like to actually work on Sundays, have had a habit of going out late on Saturdays which has mostly--last night notwithstanding--resolved itself into playing video games until 1AM. “So,” Toro says, “Steve. I saw you guys get in pretty late.”

“It was a late movie,” Bucky answers. 

“How late?”

“Late enough.”

“But he’s not here now.”

Here Bucky had been hoping that Toro either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t say anything about it. “Not everybody hooks up with someone the first time they go on a date with them. It’s actually currently being cautioned against, if you read the papers.” Even kissing and hugging is being cautioned against, but Bucky doesn’t bring that part up. 

Toro whistles, shakes the pan of bacon. “How late was it when he left?”

“Like three in the morning. I don’t know. Does it matter?” 

“Jim, of course, approves of Steve, and would reassure you that it doesn’t matter at all. I, however, am not that kind of friend.” 

“You disapprove of him? You’re the one who invited him to the chess night.”

“Someone around here has to be cautious,” Toro answers. “If Becca were here it’d be her, but since it’s just us three, I guess it’s gotta be me. Why’d he leave?” 

“He got freaked out,” Bucky answers, and Toro frowns at him.

“What do you mean, freaked out? Like about making out with you? Who does that?”

“No--no, it had to do with his nephew. You’re super judgmental this morning, by the way. I don’t think I like it.” Bucky stares at Toro, frowning back at him. “What crawled up your ass this morning, anyway?”

Toro shrugs. “I don’t know. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Bad excuse.”

“Only excuse.”

“Stop staying up late playing Metroid and you won’t feel as bad when you get up.” 

“It was Mario last night, thanks. Besides, it’s not even fun without Jim.”

“When does his shift end?”

“He’ll probably get home around like, five. I don’t know. He stays late sometimes. It didn’t used to bother me but now I guess it does. A lot.” He tilts the pan, scooping eggs out onto his and Bucky’s plates before carrying them over to the kitchen table and sitting down next to Bucky. “I don’t like it.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“Maybe, or I’ll keep feeling shitty until Jim breaks up with me, and then it’s all over.” Bucky watches Toro stab his scrambled eggs. “But his nephew?”

Bucky nods his head. “Yeah. I don’t know. I guess you’d have to ask him about it.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“Yeah, I think so.” The bacon is crispier than Toro usually makes it; the distraction is something that can be tasted when Bucky bites down. 

Toro himself looks far more pensive than he ever usually does, a furrow across his brow while he eats his eggs. “It can be dangerous,” he says, then sighs. “He’s nice, though.”

“He’s super nice.”

“Becca’s going to want to meet him.”

That’s one thing that Bucky wants to avoid. It isn’t that he dislikes his sister, but it’s different. He doesn’t want to go through the exercise of introducing her to Steve, especially if it doesn’t work out. Especially if it does work out. Either way, getting Becca all the way back to the East Coast from California is always an event that takes months to plan, and by the time she would get there, there’s the possibility that Bucky and Steve would be totally over. “Did you and Jim have a fight or something?”

Toro rolls his eyes. “No,” he answers. 

“Alright.”

“A guy can be melancholy for like five minutes.”

“Yeah, sure. Okay.”

After breakfast, they set up shop in Toro’s living room upstairs to play Super Mario Brothers until 11, at which Bucky is infinitely better than Jim. He says so; Toro kicks him. Bucky clears another level as Luigi and Toro presses the bottom of his foot into the center of Bucky’s back. “Are you guys like dating then?” he asks, and Bucky shrugs. 

He wants to be dating Steve. And, the general used to say, Sinners in Hell want water. “I don’t know,” Bucky says. “He’s really attractive and like. I was a cute kid, but that’s something that. Seems to have gone away mostly.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Barnes. If we still went dancing, you’d still be getting hit on.”

“I’m getting old.”

“Steve’s decidedly older, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about on that front.” 

Virtually anything negative Bucky has to say about himself is almost also something true about Toro, from the lack of a solid college education to their place of employment to the fact that he hasn’t bought a house yet. Realizing this, Bucky shuts up. That’s not the problem. What was his last relationship? Nothing long term. That’s the problem. Steve seems like he’s acutely ready to be settled. He  _ has _ settled, in fact. Is even raising a kid who, while not is, has become his. Bucky has a ficus that he’s been trying to kill for the past seven years and a spider plant Becca gave him when he went to college for the first time. The spider plant even has babies, cute white little flowers along its runners, enormous in its hanging pot over the kitchen window. Parental. He hasn’t graduated past plant parenthood. 

But for all that Steve is very obviously in a different part of his life, his career, his everything than Bucky, he still asked him out. Steve kissed him first, knowing where Bucky works. Knowing that Bucky lives (more or less) with his best friends. And Bucky will eventually make it clear to Steve that actually, he’s pretty satisfied with his lot in life, knowing how much worse it could be, and also that the stability he has is something he has craved since he was a little kid moving back and forth from Virginia to Japan to Georgia to Massachusetts to Japan and again and again. 

Toro’s humming, foot still square in Bucky’s back, rocking back and forth over the vertebrae. “What are you so afraid of, Bucky?” he asks, and Bucky lets out a sigh through his nose. 

“He’s cute,” Bucky says.

“You and I are cute. Steve’s handsome. Pick a better excuse.”

“What if I’m just--you know?” You know? He sighs again, presses start on the control pad. He’s not going to make it through the level, not where his head is at, but then again they need to get ready for work anyway. “Shit. I need to stop at the bank for a change run when we get to the store.”

“Do you think Fury’s ever going to notice that we both work on Sundays?”

“We both work six hour shifts on Sundays. It’s not even a full day.” He watches Luigi die, then gets up, and Toro follows, both pulling their shoes on, Bucky waiting for Toro to grab his car keys. “If he cared, he would have said something by now.”

Working at the comic book store has been, Bucky and Toro have both realized, a kind of fantasy real-life simulation. There is no other job at which they could excel doing close to nothing on such a regular basis, and no other job at which their main qualification was that they too read and collected comic books, and their fathers had worked with Nick Fury. It was one of the only things that Bucky had ever going right for him on any given day, even the days where he was in charge of events he’d rather not be running. 

Toro begs off to make the change run with two hundred dollars in twenties while Bucky waits at the store with the stray two customers who come in to browse the game guides. One asks him, “Why do you guys open so late on Sundays?” 

“You’re lucky we’re open at all on Sundays,” he says, because right now, most places aren’t. The liquor stores aren’t, most banks aren’t (except for the one inside the Stop & Shop). If Bucky had it his way, they’d never be open on a Sunday ever again.

But the day goes by quick enough, and then is morphing into a slow evening, where it’s cool enough that he does need the jacket, and that it’s very clear that fall is genuinely here to stay, at least for the next few weeks. Toro says as they’re locking up for the night, “I picked up while I picked up, if you know what I mean.” 

Bucky knocks his head against Toro’s shoulder. “Thank God one of us did.” Jim Hammond won’t smoke with the two of them, but he will be a good body pillow for Toro to octopus out against while he and Bucky smoke in Bucky’s apartment, and he’ll gladly fix the tracking on the VCR when it gets screwed up because the recording of Star Wars onto VHS from when it was airing on television isn’t great quality, but it does well enough for nights like these.

Toro pulls into the driveway, and while he and Bucky are walking up the front steps to the building, he asks, “Think Steve would ever get high with you?”

He doesn’t look like it, Bucky thinks. “Too early to tell. Jim doesn’t get high with you.”

“He’s a firefighter,” Toro says, smiling as though none of his sourness from that morning were even a thing. 

 

In fact, at that moment, Steve Rogers is smoking a bowl in Sam and Natasha’s living room with the two of them following dinner. After hearing about Steve’s abortive plan to pull Sam onto a children’s book, Natasha actually was the one who suggested he come over for dinner. They did this about three times a week (if not more often) before Steve became a legal guardian. 

Steve Rogers is well on his way to being resoundingly cooked. Teddy’s having his DnD campaign in the basement at Steve’s house, which happens every Sunday, and why it’s a better reason for Steve to not really be there. Billy’s parents are actually the architects of this particular brand of parenting, and have explained to Steve that sometimes it’s better to let them hang out alone every now and then. They’ll come to you when they need help, Rebecca Kaplan said. Jeff had nodded, and Steve, not really knowing exactly what to with teenagers except that when he was one, he wanted to be alone more often than not, thought that it was pretty great advice, especially considering that Billy seemed like an outstanding kid in his own right. Great influence on Teddy. 

Nat leans into Sam comfortably, watching Steve with an amused smile on her face as she listens to him. Sam is dealing out cards for Uno, eyebrow quirked upwards, frown very present on his face, because Steve can be stressful when he gets high strung which, based on his earlier phone call, he is. “He’s going to think I’m a fucking psycho for leaving like I did,” Steve says. He’s about to take another hit when Nat holds her hand out for it, and he passes the bong to her. 

“The only way anyone would think you’re a psycho is if they heard you right now,” Sam says. 

Nat coughs on her hit. “He took you to see a zombie movie,” she says. “You’ve got plans for tomorrow.”

“I think that there’s something up with Teddy that he’s not telling me.”

“He’s a teenager,” Sam says. “Did we tell our parents everything when we were teenagers?”

“I’m not his parent,” Steve says. There’s a flush at the top of his cheeks from the wine he had with dinner; even if he isn’t drunk, it’s still a side effect that happens every time with an Italian red. “I think he’s dating his friend—”

“Billy?” Nat asks, and Steve shakes his head no.

“No, his friend Kate. She’s cute. Is that okay for me to say? Like objectively, if I were a straight high school boy I’d think she was cute. Ugh.”

“Tony would have a lot to say about that statement,” Sam says. He places the deck of Uno cards on the coffee table and Natasha pulls apart from him to sit on the floor. They all pick up their hands and Sam frowns at the lack of any offensive play cards. 

“Tony has a lot to say about everything. I’m here worrying about Teddy and then I’m dating--I’m dating. Can you believe that I’m dating anybody? Me?”

“Steve,” Nat says, “You’re hot. You could have been dating anyone at any time.” She plays first; green two. “Is he a good kisser?”

Steve lets out a deep breath that he hadn’t looked like he was holding. “Yeah. Yeah. He’s good. He’s cute. I’m taking him to dinner tomorrow.”

“And then what are you going to do?” 

“Nat, don’t make it weird,” Sam says. Plays a red two. 

“I don’t want to take it too fast. Sam, you have a kid sister. How do you know when they’ve started dating?”

“I think,” Sam says, “you’re off the mark. Teddy gives off a big Steve Rogers vibe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nat laughs, drops her voice low into her chest. “I’m Steve Rogers, I need to do fifteen projects at once while maintaining a healthy socio-sphere and I—” she takes a dramatic pause here, “like men, more than I like women (and I like women a lot).” 

“Was that supposed to be me?” Steve asks. “I don’t think Teddy’s gay. He’s been talking about this girl Kate—” which, he remembers, Billy had gotten irritated about. “Also, Nat, draw two.”

“You’re thinking about Teddy instead of worrying about your own problems,” Sam says. It’s his turn to to take a hit, which he does gracefully, long without coughing at the end of it. “Say I agree to work on this kids book with you, even though I don’t do kids books.”

Steve perks up. “Oh?”

“Hypothetically.”

“Ok, hypothetically Sam Wilson decides to do a kids book.”

“What’s it about.”

Steve smiles, folds his hands behind his head. “It’s about a princess,” he starts. The anxiety that he had felt mounting the entire day has mostly evaporated.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thanks everyone for such wonderful, kind comments!   
> 2\. I forgot to mention that this is an alternative 80s universe where Boston is actually the center of the world in terms of everything. Providence is a close second. Steve's still from Brooklyn.   
> 3\. Hi, neighbor! Have a 'Gansett!

Steve is behind schedule on Monday. It’s extremely unusual; he’s unfortunately got a Type A personality which would have made him a great editor if that was what he wanted to do, but so far has meant that he just works more than he should. The only thing that can get him off his game is a changed deadline and a new assignment. 

He should have suspected that things were going too well before the crash at the other end of the floor, a studio space five away from him. The shouted “I quit” had him pause, look up from pencils just in time to see the back of someone’s head as they marched out. He tried not to think anything of it, but people dramatically throwing their work down and storming out isn’t necessarily a usual occurrence at work. The lines for the next issue of  _ The Human Tank _ were looking good. He’d even probably get out a little early. 

They sent Natasha to ask him, because it’s hard for him to say no to her. Can you pick up this project? Can you pick up subs? Can you give me a back massage because yours are better than Sam’s? “We’re on a tight deadline.”

“I don’t even know if I can match Alex’s style.” Or would want to, for that matter. “How much time do I have if I want to do the whole thing from scratch?” 

Nat looked at the calendar pinned to the wall of Steve’s cube. “You have two weeks to get it finished as-is.”

Two weeks. “Fine. Who’s taking over his other workload? We’re getting paid overtime to do it, right?”

“We’re dividing it up right now.”

“Nat, you can ask everyone here to work more if you’re not going to pay them more.”

“I know. I know. We’ll figure it out.” She looks at the pencils he’s been working on. “You’re ahead on that, right?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, Nat, I guess I am.”

“You should take a look at what Alex had done. I think there are only ten pages left.”

Only ten pages left. He lets out a sigh, looks up at the ceiling and then at Natasha. “I’ll do it.” That was a little after lunch. Then he took a look at what Alex had done, took a look at the actual writing, and wanted to storm out too. But it’s not his story, it’s not even a character he’s particularly involved with, and it’s not the worse thing to bring home a couple of extra bucks, since Teddy eats like there’s a black hole in his gut and Steve does, too. He makes a phone call to the writer upstairs, asks if there’s any way they can reframe the story so whatever Steve does with the art makes sense, and the writer’s so pleased that he’s got Steve FUCKING Rogers working on this that he’s willing to make any concession Steve asks him to, as long as it makes it down to the rest of the department and then print on time. Steve’s not doing colors on this one--which is a shame, but it wouldn’t make sense with everything else. Also, he’s interested in doing this as little as possible. 

But in any case, he’s behind schedule, and he’s calling Bucky at 5:15 to tell him. 

“Hello?”

“I’m running late.”

“Oh, hi Steve. How late?”

“They dropped another project on me after lunch late,” he says. “I’m not staying past six, but I had to figure out what the writer wanted. I’m sorry.”

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately. “I’m actually kind of glad you called?” he says. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Uh. It’s not like a big thing but Jim’s making dinner and wanted to know if you would be interested and I told him we were going to dinner so it wasn’t a big deal but I mean if you’re going to be a little late Jim hasn’t even started dinner yet and I’m sure—” Bucky’s speaking so quickly that it sounds like he might be embarrassed, and Steve smiles and says:

“That sounds great.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“No--they’re your friends, I’d like to.” 

“They’re really more like assholes I happen to live with.” Bucky’s voice has returned to its usual tone and speed (and can Steve even think that, think that there is a usual when he’s only known him for a week? He thinks--yes, he can). “You said six?”

“So I’d probably get there a little closer to six-thirty,” Steve says. 

“Alright. I’ll let him know that you’re coming. I’ll see you then?”

“See you then.” 

He’s torn about whether or not to call home, and then decides against it. Teddy already knew he was going to not be home, and he’d brought home plenty of leftover lasagna from Sam and Nat’s so he’s not going to go hungry without Steve there. Then he gets back to work for another half hour, looks at the mess of the page, compares it to the mess of the writing, grabs his coat, and gets ready to leave for the night. 

When he gets to Bucky’s apartment, Bucky and Toro are on the front porch smoking and drinking from cans of Narragansett. “Hi, neighbor, have a ‘Gansett!” Toro says when he spots Steve getting out of the car. Bucky waves at him.

“You don’t have to drink Narragansett. It’s not the same since they moved out of state,” Bucky says, getting up off the stoop to greet Steve. 

“He does to have to drink a Gansett.” Toro hands him one like he was waiting, or like he was about to be on his next drink soon enough that he thought to bring another with him. “Since I only had Jim buy it.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I have Miller in the fridge,” he says.

“It’s alright,” Steve says, smiling. “I’ll take the Narragansett.” 

It’s almost dark out. Bucky has a kind of glow around his face, which admittedly could be because of the alcohol he’s been drinking, but also might be because Steve is absolutely smitten with him. “Smoke?” Bucky asks, hand reaching towards his pocket.

“No, maybe later,” he answers. 

“Jim’s inside cooking,” Bucky says, and a lightness comes over Toro, who’s been giving Steve an admittedly suspicious look since he handed him the beer. Steve can’t tell if he’s making sure he actually drinks it or if he’s suspicious of Steve himself.

“He’s a wonderful house husband when he’s actually in the house. Speaking of which, it’s warmer inside so I’m going to head in and bother him.” 

Toro tucks himself away behind the door, it shutting behind him, and Steve feels his shoulders drop. Relief. He was absolutely being judged. “I’ve got to be honest with you,” he says, “I’m not that great a cook.”

Bucky laughs and then reacts to his own laughter like it caught him off guard. “I’m not a great cook, either,” he says. 

“You all are Red Sox fans around here?” Steve asks, and Bucky makes a face.

“I like the O’s, but Toro is actually from here so I guess it’s his prerogative. Jim too, but Jim never left.” He pauses, then looks at Steve. “Do you?” 

“I try not to have really strong opinions on baseball around here,” Steve says. 

“You’re not from Massachusetts.”

“I’m from Brooklyn.”

“I guess you’re really not allowed to have opinions on baseball after all,” Bucky laughs. “Um. So, work?”

Steve feels a body sigh lifting his shoulders, and he looks at the open mouth of the beer can. “Someone quit. We pick up the slack. Same as if it were every other job.” Same, and easier. He still for the most part has enough energy to want to be personable at the end of the day. He knows plenty of people who don’t. “You?”

“You know, sometimes I think every day there is just like every other one, even when I think about the weird things that customers will ask. It sort of sloughs off.”

“Today you get any weird customers?”

“No tall blondes spending almost a hundred bucks on Conan comics, that’s for sure,” Bucky says.

Steve leans in conspiratorially. “Yeah, those guys are the fuckin’ worst, huh?”

“Practically monsters, in fact,” Bucky says, grinning. “Have to chase them out of the store with 3-D chess boards.”

“I might know a guy who could help with that kind of problem.”

“Probably charges a million bucks an hour.” It’s getting kind of dangerous, Steve realizes, and Bucky realizes it too, leans back, walks up the stoop while still facing Steve. “Jim’s probably almost done with dinner, if you want to come in. American Chop Suey.”

“Like Chinese food?”

“No--like New England firefighter food. C’mon.” Bucky turns around and walks into the apartment building, holding the door for Steve and starting up the first step to the second floor. “I actually used to live on the second floor, and Jim used to live down here, but nobody really questions who’s on what floor as long as they’re getting paid.” He waits for Steve to close the door before continuing. “I mean. I like it here. It’s a good place to have landed, you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. 

“Oh, yeah, and before I forget,” Bucky says, and he steps back down onto the landing, kisses Steve, and Steve feels like the luckiest guy in the world for five seconds, like he hasn’t just been handed a huge extra workload, or like he’s not liable to just short circuit at any moment. “Thanks for coming by. They’re going to be annoying.”

“I can deal with that,” Steve says, and Bucky hums to himself before pulling back, leading him back up the stairs, and pushing the door open. The layout of the apartment is the same as the one below it, with an extra door leading to an outdoor patio. 

Jim and Toro are in the kitchen, Toro complaining about the fact that the shipment on Wednesday is going to be coming late, so they’re still going to be putting comics out when customers start coming in, Jim nodding his head as he checks on something in the oven. “Hello, Steve,” Jim says, interrupting Toro. 

“Hi, Jim. Thanks for making dinner.” And the beer. And everything. 

“It’s like, done,” Toro says. “How do you feel about board games?”

“I guess it depends on the board game.”

“He’s talking about Monopoly,” Bucky says.

“The food’s almost done,” Jim says. 

“I was not talking specifically about Monopoly, but yes, in this case, I was referring mostly to Monopoly. I told Bucky to invite you over because he was going to try to weasel out of playing with us.”

At once, Steve feels like he’s at home, the same way he feels with Sam and Nat, who probably would have liked to be there, if it weren’t for the fact that Steve was still a little sour about having the project thrust on him, and if it weren’t for the fact that it’s alright to have more than one group of friends. That’s something he’s been getting used to; growing up has meant a lot of drifting away, and then in the army, he got some of it back, only to have it pulled away again. 

The American Chop Suey is a pasta dish. Mostly. He can’t tell what it should or shouldn’t be classified as except that the name’s a misnomer, and that he likes it, likes that the sauce makes Bucky’s mouth red and likes that Jim is like an anchor between the increasingly rapid and esoteric firings between Bucky and Toro at each other. And then there’s a look between Jim and Toro while they’re playing Monopoly and it’s the same tenderness that Nat and Sam will do, and usually, Steve feels excluded. Separate for a few reasons, not least of which being that he third wheels his married best friends more often than not. This time, it doesn’t feel like Steve’s being excluded by virtue of being himself; no--Bucky’s knee is touching his under the card table in the kitchen, around which they’re all seated. This is good, Steve thinks. 

Jim wins the game. Steve would be irritated, but it’s hard to; Jim just has an amicable kind of face. “We’re probably going to go to bed soon,” Toro says. 

They’re not going to bed.

“That’s fine,” Bucky says. “Steve, do you want to go down and watch a movie?”

“Sure,” Steve says. 

They’re not going to watch a movie. 

He helps clean up from dinner, washes the dishes with efficiency he thought he’d lost after moving out of his mother’s house the first time, and Toro dries. “I’m not going to give you like the shotgun talk,” Toro says quietly. 

“You’re going to give me the shotgun talk,” Steve says.

“I don’t even own a shotgun. But uh. You seem like a nice guy.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“That’s all I really have to say about it,” Toro says. “Thanks for coming to dinner.”

“Thanks for inviting me.”

“Bucky wouldn’t have if Jim hadn’t pushed him into it. We didn’t ruin the night for you guys, did we?”

“Not at all,” Steve says. Kind of made it, because Toro was able to keep the conversation going when Bucky started to lag, and Steve’s not always a great conversationalist. He knows this. He’s been working on it for twenty years. 

He follows Bucky back down the stairs, and it’s not like the eager neediness from the last time he was here. It’s mellowed a little; when he looks at Bucky he starts feeling it again, but can clamp down on it before he starts acting like a teenager again. Except--when Bucky looks at him to ask what kind of movie he wants to watch, Steve can’t help but reach out to him, and when Bucky comes, kisses him because he’s been waiting, because they have unfinished business. 

“We shouldn’t have sex tonight,” Bucky says, and Steve finds himself readily agreeing.

“Not that I don’t want to—”

“But don’t want to rush into it?” Bucky says, and Steve nods. 

“That’s a lot of pressure off my back,” Steve says. 

“Good,” Bucky says. He pulls away, turns the television on. “I figure you probably have to leave pretty soon tonight anyway.”

It’s almost ten. On a school night. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m going to be pretty swamped with work for the next couple of weeks. Is Saturday--does Saturday work for you?”

“In general, yeah. Saturdays work pretty well for me. As long as you’re fine with late night movies.”

“I’ll see just about anything,” Steve says. Don’t get upset with me that I can’t be around, he thinks. Don’t think I’m trying to get out of seeing you. Don’t assume the worst and then never talk to me again. You feel good. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, taking a seat on the couch. “You’re thinking pretty loud.”

“I get that sometimes.” He sits down next to Bucky and looks at the newscaster on the television. It’s what he’d probably be watching if he were at home. 

Bucky curls in closer, and Steve takes a chance and kisses him, helps when Bucky gets the idea that maybe sitting right next to each other isn’t as good as him sitting in Steve’s lap. The television’s on mute. It doesn’t matter what it’s saying. “Hey,” Bucky says softly, pushing a hand through Steve’s hair. “Toro asked me if we were dating.”

“I sure hope so,” Steve says, and it takes a second, but Bucky smiles at him, like he had been worried that maybe this was just a once-twice-third time thing, that this was it after all. “I mean,” Steve says, “Yeah. Let’s say we’re dating.”

Bucky’s a nice solid weight on him, for the however long they have to keep kissing, keep talking about hating the news and still watching it, before Steve has to leave. He wishes he could just bring Bucky home with him. He promises to call when he gets home, even though based on the way Bucky’s yawning, and he’s feeling the yawn back, it’s going to be a pretty brief phone conversation. That’s fine. This feels pretty fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments feed authors who aren't sure whether or not people even like what they're doing--even if comments aren't always responded to, they're always appreciated.


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